


Death is the Road to Awe

by steelneena



Series: CR 2 Oneshots and Short Series [9]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Blood, Flashbacks to character death, Gen, Molly is the vessel of a God, Sort Of, The Luxon, Tin Hatting, Visions, culty stuff, discussions of unsolicited nudity, fix it (?) fic?, i don't even know how to tag this anymore, i guess?, it's all visions and bullshit, metaphysical soul burning?, multiclassing caleb, no actual dub con, nobody knows..., serious speculation, some discussion of perceived dub con non-explicit, some graphic description of death, some minor nudity, the Phoenix god, warlock caleb, weirdly religious, who did they bring back?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-10
Updated: 2019-04-23
Packaged: 2019-10-25 17:26:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 35,611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17729570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/steelneena/pseuds/steelneena
Summary: Cree is left with a choice after Fjord brings her the news of Lucien's demise.Things don't go exactly as planned.FORMERLY TITLED: and I see fire, blood in the breeze





	1. 1. and I see fire, blood in the breeze

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Meridas](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Meridas/gifts).



> Thanks to Matt Freaking Mercer for dropping the DM notes for session 17 and sending the entire widomauk server into a tizzy, myself included. 
> 
> This is all your fault.
> 
> Written to BlackHill & Silent Island's A wild river to take you home  
> Chapter title from The Hobbit's I See Fire  
> Thanks to Critrole transcritpts for the dialogue from the scene with Fjord.

_“Who am I? The fire of my feathers,_

_My flaming presence only tells in part._

_No one beholds all of what I am.”_

 

_“But what is order, what is gain to me_

_Who am bound to you in no more than memory?_

_To have held you once should be enough,_

_but it is not: consumed by your flame --_

_a yearning beyond any worldly desire --_

_consuming me too slowly, too slowly,_

_my cruel bird of fire!”_

From _Gift of the Firebird_ and _Addressed to the Firebird_ by Arthur Gregor

 

 

As soon as the Half-Orc man is finished speaking with the Gentleman, Cree pounces. “I’m sorry to bother you,” she begins, nervous, though she already knows the answer to her questions. Knows it deep in her heart. “I noticed you descend here. I have heard since your last arrival that there were losses on your journey.” The anxiety in her voice must show through because the Half-Orc seems just as nervous as she feels, humming at her in question. “I have had a number of uncomfortable dreams in the week, and… I cannot sense Lucien.”

There is a pause, as though he is considering what to say. (She knows, she knows, her heart is breaking.)

“Tell me,” he says. “about these dreams.”

At first, Cree doesn’t want to say anything, but the quality to his tone changes her mind. He is tired, so, so tired, bone deep, soul permeating exhaustion. The kind that only comes of stress and loss and heartache. She can recognize it in her own voice, sometimes, when the pain of what once passed comes near to the fore.

In the end, she decides, it can’t hurt to tell him.

“They are cold and sad. I just see Him alone, and I’ve tried to focus. He is not nearby…“ She paused. “I have a very hollow feeling about this.”

His eyes shift, he wets his lips, looks down and to the side, avoiding her gaze. “Yes, unfortunately your dreams may have some merit. I myself was missing for most of our journey, and it seems, unfortunately, that Lucien befell a terrible fate.”

The hollow space in her stomach screams, a gaping void where His return once filled her bleeding soul.

“That was what I was fearing.” Her voice sounds brittle to her own ears.

“I’m sorry to be the one to let you know.” There is a look of genuine remorse on his face, and in some strange manner, if soothes and infuriates Cree at the same time. Whatever pity she felt for the hardships he underwent dissipates, but she keeps the kindly façade, waiting for the rest of his testimony. “If I was there I could give you more detail, but I found out much in the same way you are.”

“That is all right. Thank you for your honesty. It is hard for him to be gone for so long, then come back, and so swiftly go again. Maybe I had put too much faith…” Too much faith? Or too little?

The sadness on the Half-Orc’s face turns to probing curiosity. “You said he left before and then came back. If you don’t mind my asking, the last time that he left, do you remember the circumstances of his departure?

There are but two consequences of sharing that information, and neither are dangerous enough for Cree to warrant passing his question over. “We of the Tomb Takers, we were undergoing a ritual that he had orchestrated with an ally of His, a woman-“ she says, disgusted. “-of magical renown. He said that this was something that was meant to lead us to this city He promised, a place where we could learn of a great many powers and secrets. We believed Him. He was very charismatic in His cruelty at times.”

_Blood for blood. Bone for bone. Death for life and Life for death. All or nothing, Cree. Are you with me?_

_Yes. Yes, Lucien. Anything for you._

_The Nonagon. I am the Nonagon._

Cree hangs her head. “But He did not survive.”

“And then you saw him here for the first time in quite a while, yes?

“Two years.” Long, empty years, searching for meaning, for purpose, anything to fill the void.

“Two years?” His ears prick up and he cocks his head, as though he knows something she doesn’t. “Two years. Are you– and forgive me if this is too personal– are you expecting to see him again?

Or is it simply hope?

“I wasn’t expecting to see Him this last time.” Cree admits with defeat. Anger is welling within her now. How dare this man even begin to _think_ that he knew Lucien? Cared for Him? Her next words, she angles to hurt, poised to pierce, to sting. “I feel like whatever grace brought Him back to us, maybe it was your carelessness that took him from us again.”

To his merit, the Half-Orc takes it without defense. “Indeed, maybe it was. You have my apologies and my condolences.”

Something in her softens. The fire, burned away to ash. “It is all right. I have started a new life here, and it has been serving me well.”

“I hate to leave you with such sour news, but I must be going.”

“Such are these days. Thank you for your candor.”

When the Half-Orc man is finally gone, Cree takes her drink to the corner of the tavern and sits, sipping in silence, thinking. He’s dead again.

Dead again.

Pushing the welling sorrow within her aside, Cree thinks back to how it was. Zoran and Otis and Tyffial…Jurrel…

All so full of hope. All so full of belief. Belief in the City, in the answers that they sought. Belief in _Him_.

The same belief that still courses through her now.

She thinks even further back, back to when the Nonagon first spoke to them, to her. How she felt it in her soul, like a calling, when He spoke her name. His magnetism, His fervor... She broke with the Order for Him, she lived for Him, killed for Him. Even now, she knows she would die for Him, if only given a chance. A chance it seems that He has continued to deny her. For all He was a miraculous visionary, He was also reckless. That, it seems, had not changed with time.

But she also remembers how He was before, before the visions, before He saw the flame fall over the world like a funeral pall and heard the cry of the Phoenix. How earnest He was. And zealous. And driven. Her friend, despite His biting tongue and His hard, sparking eyes.

Before, when he was just Lucien.

A plan has already begun to form in her mind. A plan easily enough enacted. They need no Capital Spellslinger. They need no book. No, for this she needs only herself and those loyal to Him and to find the place where they so carelessly discarded His body, in the same manner she once had.

He came back once. It is possible, she knows that now. Possible that he could rise again. But why wait? She can achieve what she wants in the now.

And above all else she wants Lucien…even above wanting the Nonagon.

Cree shivers a bit at the sacrilegious consideration. She would follow Lucien to the bitter end, but the Nonagon’s path, the Nonagon’s mission…those have brought little but sorrow. But they are one, and she cannot pick and choose what she brings back. The red Eyes that adorn His skin are mark enough of His inviolability, His role in the world, in the events that He has already foretold will come to pass.

(Though there was much He could not foretell. His own death was not among the visions which He shared those dark nights when they all crowded around Him, eager to hear His words, to be graced by His presence, His bestowed favour.)

Perhaps this was a test.

When He’d spoken with her, He’d been so little and yet so much like Himself that she couldn’t help but be suspicious. If this was a test…she would surpass expectations. She would bring the Tomb Takers together again and she would rally them at His grave and together they would see to His return, His second rebirth, and, under his guidance, they would come to the City and the world would burn in Phoenix fire and be reborn, just as He had been and would be reborn.

As the thoughts pass over her, Cree’s eyes flutter shut and she can see Him, just as He was the day they lost Him, stripped of His usual armor, of the Order’s dark robes, feet bare in the dirt, clad in nothing but His dark leather leggings.

He’d asked her only the night before to cut His hair.

Cree remembers it like it were yesterday, His hand over her paw, passing her the knife.

_I want you to do it. I can’t let anything hold me back, hold me down._

His eyes had been so bright and so cold and she’d done as He asked, taking the simple blade from Him with care, allowing her pads to comb through His dark locks. The blade slid through them like butter and they fell at her feet, shivering down His back.

She’d been so careful not to nick Him, not to spill His blood, unless He desired it.

When it was over, He turned back to her. _Thank you, Cree. You’ve always been my most devoted. My friend above all else. Don’t forget that?_

_What, my lord Nonagon?_

_That we are friends._

She remembers how she almost used His name that night, though she hadn’t used it in over a year, how she almost let ‘Lucien’ drop from her lips, how she wished to beg Him to forget the whole thing. Was it her doubt that had doomed Him? Had she not been devoted enough, had she not had enough faith in His abilities?

No matter. There is no room for doubt now. He returned. He died once more. And She is going to bring him back this time. Prove her loyalty through the devotion she should _always_ have shown him. She will breathe life back into His body, return His soul to the place it called home, fix rotting flesh and splintered bone.

She will return Him to the world, a Phoenix in His own right, set to blaze a trail of glory across the Empire and far into other lands beyond their reach, even unto other planes of existence. He will burn bright and blossom, the Firebird streaking through the sky in a new dawn for Exandria. A new dawn for the whole world.

She will do this all, and more, for love and devotion to Him.

And she knows just where to begin.

Shady Creek Run.

* * *

 

The others come when she calls them. It was an easy enough thing to leave the Gentleman behind, to offer her services to check on how things were progressing up in the Run while Lady Mardun enjoyed her… vacation. An extra stop in Nugvorot along the way saw to Tyffial’s return to the fold. Otis and Zoran are alerted via Sending. When Cree and Tyffial arrive at the spot, the other two follow not long after.

It is a majestic sight to behold, the place where the Mighty Nein laid Him to rest. The flowers and fungi that adorn the grave are in full bloom, despite the frost and snow. A stick is planted at the head of the gentle mound.

It is more than they gave Him. More than they dared, considering. A cold, shallow grave, markerless, was all they had afforded the Nonagon. Out of protection, out of fear, out of grief.

The spectacle before her is mocking. If Jurrel were there…

But Jurrel is not there.

Tyffial turns to Cree. “You were His right hand.”

Something else lingers in his words. Something like guilt. That he failed to protect his Liege, his Sworn Master. His charge.

He was beloved to them all, not just her. Sometimes, impossibly Cree forgets that.

“We were all His chosen, Tyffial.” She turns to Otis and Zoran. “We need to bring Him forth from the earth. And then I can begin the ritual.”

There’s hesitance, reluctance born of bitter disappointment and fleeting hopes. Zoran turns her head, gazes long and hard at the grave. “Will it work, Cree?”

“I saw Him, living, with my own two eyes. And this is not where we buried him before.” In the woods, deep and dark and silent. Where only the dead hear the raven’s call. Cree feels it in her bones, sets her jaw. “The Phoenix graced Him once, and we would be fools to ignore the Phoenix’s desires.”

Together, they dig Him up.

Strangely enough, he is wrapped in a fine tapestry bearing the image of the Platinum Dragon. In their haste to free him from such ill confines, they expose the grisly work of time and…whatever else pressed its roots into the spot to birth life from the wintry bones of the world. Zoran doesn’t even flinch. She’s seen worse in her time with the Myriad, but Otis is fragile and turns his face away.

Cree is as stone. She can’t allow herself to be less. Tyffial is still, but the emotion behind his eyes bears a weight that knows no proper name. “Control yourself, Otis.” Cree commands coolly. “This is still your Lord, the Nonagon. Behave as such.”

Otis stiffens and forces his gaze to land on the ravaged features.

Together, the four of them lift His body out and lay It on the cold earth. The tapestry is flung away, that it cannot desecrate the grave where He’d lain, nor His person any longer. Cree takes a breath. Centers herself.

From her pack, she pulls a diamond, resting it on the mangled remnants of His chest. His sternum is cracked and splintered, split through, the pristine ivory visible through the clinging grey patches of shriveled skin over shreds of muscle. Only the places where the Eyes were remain untouched by decay and time. She imagines the wicked gleam of the weapon as it pierced His chest and swallows hard.

 _Foolish_ , she thinks, only to immediately berate herself. She does not know how it occurred. They must not have been protecting Him. They must not have…not have…

It does not matter. Forcibly, Cree puts it away. It does not matter. Death does not matter. Only belief that He will live again. That He already has. Once, without any direct interference from the material plane. The thought itself is daunting.

Cree closes her eyes, and see His, glinting fierce, glowing red in the darkness.

Mutters the incantation.

Opens them.

Speaks.

“My Lord, Nonagon. Lucien. You are our hope for the future. It is in You that I placed my fealty once, my faith, my heart. And to You, I pledge once more, all that I am to Your service. To worship the Phoenix through You, to be a bearer of Your power to the world. I give You now the blood of our bond, in symbol of my life’s dedication to Your Will. Whatever I shall do, I shall do only in Your Name.” She draws along her paw a dark blade, the blood welling and falling onto what once were His lips. “Take my life, for Your own, and grace us once more, that the new dawn may come and the world be covered over in renewing fire.”

Tyffial goes next. Whatever words he speaks, he does in their shared language, and Cree can only understand the sentiment through the way he moves, the set of his jaw, the firm press of his hand over jagged shards of bone, slicing his palm, giving his blood as well. The final words he speaks, Cree makes out. “It is my job to bleed for You. And my pleasure.”

Her heart aches.

Zoran and Otis look between one another. Eventually, Otis bows his head and Zoran starts forward, her long braid swinging over her shoulder as she kneels.

“Nonagon.”

She never was one for words.

Taking the blade still wetted with Cree’s blood, she grasps her braid in one hand and slices with the other. It falls to the ground, limp, beside Him.

“My blades are sharp. My will to serve is strong. Return, return and guide us, Firebird. Return and give us strength. Return and bring with You the knowledge You sought. Return victorious.”

The blade presses into her thumb and she squeezes out the blood drops, moving her hand so they fall in the shape of the Eye over his forehead.

Otis kneels, head inclined.

Zoran and Tyffial are watching her. There is no nervousness on their faces, no doubt, no fear. Only zeal is written there.

It burns inside Cree’s skull, a tattooing tempo.

_Arise, arise, arise._

She completes the arcane incantation, feels His power surge through her. The diamond shatters into a thousand, million pieces and light suffuses His body, so bright, so beautiful, that they all must look away.

Before she looks back, Cree already knows that she has done her job. Already knows what she will see when she does. The others must feel it too, for, one by one, they shift until each rests only upon one knee, heads bowed. A shadow shifts before them, but Cree doesn’t chance looking up. Awe and warmth wash over her, tingling through her like a thousand lightning impulses, static between her fur, which stands on end.

The shadow rises, covers the sun.

Her heart is welling with joy, impossible overwhelming joy.

Cree’s eyes flutter open. Without moving her head, she looks up, out from beneath her lashes.

From the shadow, red eyes glow.

Cree breathes out in relief, in elation.

She can feel his gaze resting on her, waiting. Waiting.

“Nonagon. You are our God.” The words fall from her lips slow, like honey.

“Long may you reign.”

* * *

 

They travel into Zadash. She entreats Him to go elsewhere, but He insists. They rest the requisite number of days for Him to recover and then leave. None of them ask Him for His blessing, to anoint them them with His blood as He once had, when they broke from the Order and pledged themselves to him. He is too weak. All the same, He looks magnificent outfitted in his ceremonial clothing once more, over the armor that Tyffial had cared for with such dedication.

Cree knows better than to question His word. But He is different, and it frightens her. Quieter than usual, and less...affectionate. He was already different the last time they met in Zadash, and she’d been suspicious then, but the overwhelming relief she felt at seeing Him...and when He’d asked her to call Him Lucien…Both hope and fear warred within her. And a desire to turn back the clock, to put things back the way they were before the visions…before the Nonagon. When He was only Lucien, when He looked up to her, relied on her.

 _I still rely on you, Cree_ , she recalled Him saying, not long before they lost Him, but it meant something different than it once had and the loss of that facet of their relationship stung.

Now, He is different yet again. While the embers still glow ominously in His eyes, there is something else undefinable, something that grounds the increasingly alien nature He’d taken on towards the first end. Something that reminds her of a prey animal, and not the predator she generally associates with Him.

And Cree is not the only one to notice. If anything struck Tyffial as odd, she knew he would never say it, too devoted for the heretical thoughts that plague Cree. Zoran, however, has no such compunctions. It is late, and the Nonagon is asleep when Zoran approaches her on watch.

"He is not Lucien,” she hisses, her back to where He rests.

Even hearing the words sends a shiver up Cree’s spine. Her tail twitches dangerously. "Perhaps not, but neither is The Nonagon. Lucien was lost to us long ago." Admitting it out loud is simultaneously freeing and damning. Zoran lets go a harsh breath. There is a long pause, during which Cree knows Zoran is considering her words carefully.

“It is something more than that.”

Once more, Zoran gives voice to the thoughts Cree harbours only in the darkest recesses of her mind. “Careful what you say. He is still the Nonagon.”

“I know.”

They are on the road the first time a vision captures Him. Tyffial manages to catch Him as He collapses to the ground, twitching, eyes wide open and staring blankly into the far reaches of other planes and the knowledge that the Phoenix imparts graces Him. The embers there flare and ignite. They lay Him on the ground and kneel in a circle. Shaking, Cree opens the pad of her thumb with a claw and anoints His forehead with the Eye. She begins the chant and they all join in. It rises and swells, ebbing and flowing like the tide until, one by one, the red Eyes burst along His body, soaking through His robes and his leathers as he begins to mutter.

They cease their chanting immediately. The chilling language that leaves His lips sends thrills through Cree. She feels it like a snake, coiling in her stomach, poisonous and sensuous all at once. He does not stop. The words roll off his tongue and hang in the air around him, cloying and sparking with arcane energy, leaving Cree’s fur to stand on end.

Then, all at once, it is over.

The Nonagon falls slack, breathing irregularly, but gone still and peaceful for once, though His eyes are still blank. Waiting is just as terrible as it always was; Cree's heart feels tight with incredible pressure, like there is too much blood trying to pump its way through her chest, and not enough space for it to flow. As though His hand is wrapped around it, squeezing.

When He finally sucks in a rattling breath, the vice grip of fear and anticipation falls away.

“Lord Nonagon?”

It is Otis. There is zeal in his eyes and his voice.

The Nonagon sits up.

Reverently, Cree hold out an open hand. “My Lord, Nonagon. What did You see?”

She chances a glance and could almost swear there is fear in His eyes. But, in a blink, it is gone, and only rapturous glory shines forth.

His voice shakes with power when He speaks. “The burning of the world. The war...the war…”

It is not like before, when He would speak to the exalted new dawn, the words spilling from His lips in an impassioned fervour. Instead, He goes quiet again, quiet, but not still. The Nonagon is ablaze with life. He reaches out a hand for Cree. Tremulously, she reaches back.

Their hands connect and He draws her near. What pain, what white hot righteous flame burns under His skin.

“Xhorhaas…” He whispers, eyes rolling, glazed over. It is only then that Cree realizes He still isn't with them, lost to the vision. “The war...in Xhorhaas… Fire from the sky, fire from under the earth…” The bite of his talons into her flesh feels like a benediction, blood matting her fur as it runs in rivulets over her arm.

His talons flex, in and out, piercing her anew. The tension in his lax body suddenly rears and coils. All brace themselves in anticipation. The fire from within Him explodes, and Cree feels her fur singe, but doesn't let go.

He simmers, cools.

It ends.

The rhythm of his breathing eases for a while.

Cree does not know what to feel. The Nonagon is beautiful and terrible. His majesty cows her. But the power that is channeled through Him is eating away at what remains of her friend. But she is loyal. Ever loyal. Always His servant, His devotee. A soft sound breaks through her reverent silence and turbulent thoughts. Her ears twitch. There is a rustle of movement as the others to begin to hear the sound and Cree opens her eyes, looks away from where their hands are clasped, readying herself to behold His magnificence.

Something glints on His bloodied cheeks.

It takes her longer than it should to recognize the He is crying.

“Quickly,” she hisses to the others in order. “Bring water and cloths.”

They do as she asks without question, leaving her alone with Him. “Oh, Lucien…” she murmurs before she can stall herself. Reaching a hand to His face, she brings Him to look at her.

Fear. Raw fear shines in his usually immutable eyes, as if He is torn between leaning into her soft touch and thrashing away with the last of His strength.

The last time Lucien showed His fear to her was after the first vision came to Him in the night. Before they broke with the Order. Before He took her face in His hands, kissed her forehead and proclaimed her Priestess of the Nonagon, of the Firebird and the Phoenix. Before it consumed Him.

_Cree, it’s important. It’s chosen me. I can feel it. I can feel it. I am It’s vessel. I will bring the new dawn to Exandria, to all the planes. And the world...I saw the world reborn from the ash! It was...Cree, it was beautiful...there aren’t words to describe. Fire from the sky, and a terrible cacophony that shook the world. And I was the eye of the storm. Come with me. Please._

They had not been questions.

 _I would follow you to the ends of the earth, Lucien. I would_ die _for you, Lucien._

The shaking Creature with power welling up behind His eyes, bursting through the fear, is not Lucien. But it doesn’t matter, Cree reminds herself. Stolid. Steadfast. Loyal and true.

Whoever He is, He is still the Nonagon, and she will not turn from Him.

 


	2. 2. A Wild River To Take You Home

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It just won't leave me alone. Thank you, Ali.
> 
> Written to: Death is the Road to Awe by Clint Mansell https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Whuf6C_T8tc

They make it to Zadash before The Nonagon really starts to talk again. Save when He falls into a vision and imparts the information to them after, He is mostly silent after his resurrection, watchful and wary. Cree doesn’t know why He doesn’t speak (He’s _always_ been a talker.), but she suspects. It is enough that she doesn’t press for an answer. Instead, she comforts Him when the dreams leave Him shaking uncontrollably, even after the fit has passed, and keeps the remnants of their company united in the meantime.

When they arrive in Zadash, things are not easier, or different; in fact, for a while, nothing much happens. They use one of Cree’s safe houses and remain hidden away from the Gentleman, surviving more than thriving, as the Nonagon has yet to give them instructions beyond His first entreaty for them to go there in the first place. The visions come and go. The only thing that varies is their intensity; every time He has one, they escalate, lasting longer, placing greater strain on His still weakened body. None since the first have conjured the fire.

After a while, Cree starts to notice a pattern. A day or so after each vision, Otis, or sometimes Zoran, will return from gathering supplies with news about a Krynn advance on the Empire’s boarders.

The most intense vision occurs a few nights before the city receives word of the burning of Felderwin. The nine red Eyes on his skin burst and ooze deep red blood. He speaks in words only Tyffial can understand, though what he relates to them seems to be little more than gibberish. When the Nonagon comes out of it, there are no tears and fear as there has been in past weeks.

No, this time there is a terrible gleam as He clasps Cree’s paw, just this side of too tightly.

“Xhorhaas. Xhorhaas is where it happens.” Energy radiates from His voice, an excitement that seems not wholly His own, but grander, greater, cresting and soaring. “Time is spiraling out of control, a Beacon…they have a Beacon…catastrophic, high winds and screaming air…I hear it, I hear it right now, it’s happening, it’s happening-“

The Nonagon falls back, breathing hard. Cree catches Him. A drop of blood from the Eye she painted on His forehead trickles over the bridge of His nose, following the line of His brow to run down past the corner of His eye like a tear. He is brimming, bright and beautiful, and Cree is overwhelmed with how much she has missed this from Him. The sheer intensity of the Nonagon’s existence completes and fulfills them all. Zoran lays prostrate on the ground. Tyffial would be too, if he didn’t take the guarding of the door to the Nonagon’s chambers so seriously. Otis whispers vows of devotion in a language only he seems to know.

Hovering over the Nonagon in eager anticipation, Cree mutters her own prayer as she considers the jigsaw puzzle of His words, while she waits for His breath to even, His eyelids to flicker and open.

She prays for many things. Sometimes, in the dark corners of her heart, she prays for _her_ Lucien to return.

Cree knows that it won’t happen. That the traumas of repeated death have permanently altered that part of Him. It feels selfish to wish that it would be Lucien smiling at her, that He would take her into His confidence as He had so often, so long ago now.

When the Nonagon sits up, the first thing He does is bite His lip very purposefully with his elongated canine; fresh, warm blood spills down over His chin. Lifting a finger, hands slow and trembling with effort after the vision, he wets the tip with his blood and turns to Cree.

She knows what is coming and bows her head to Him.

She doesn’t feel it the way the others do, not through her fur, but it excites her all the same, the gift of His blood a consecration of their mission. Deliberately, the Nonagon paints His mark on her forehead. When He is done, she ducks to the side so that the others, kneeling in a line behind her, can be anointed with His power too, that they may all share in His gifts, His glory, His vision.

The unending depths of His red eyes challenge each of them in turn, looking beyond their physical selves.

Once, he may have spoken.

_I see what none others can. I see into the fabric of the world. I see the lines of light that join your souls with your bodies, the tendrils of existence that coil and fray and unfurl, I see the ways you live, I see the ways you die, I see the ways that you are made, and the ways that you unravel. See with me, now. See as I see, share in my vision._

The first time, Cree thought she was going to die. It was nothing like the dreams she sometimes had. The ones that had led her to Lucien in the first place. This is different. It feels like drowning in air. Too much filling her lungs, too much expanding inside the cavity of her abdomen where she has always imagined her soul to sit, were it a physical thing. The rush leaves her shivering and breathless and weak, overcome with such ecstasy from the trance, far more than any drug has ever afforded her. To share in the Nonagon’s power is to die a thousand deaths and then, erupt back to life, a flame burning inside the mind. 

When she comes to, she can never precisely remember what she has seen, not the way that the Nonagon seems to. But the feeling remains, a residual high that flakes away over time. Afterwards, they all seem to fight better, aim truer, see more clearly in the dark, better understand the minds and hearts of people. His blessing on them, truly.

Cree missed this.

When she sits up, however, the Nonagon is nowhere to be seen. Nervous, she scans the room. Tyffial is sitting with Him in a corner, speaking to Him in Infernal. Not for the first time, she wonders what it is that they discuss. Cree has always had to chide herself against jealousy, remind herself that she shares a special relationship with her Lord that the others to not. That she is His High Priestess. Luci-The Nonagon always made time for each of them in the past, always made sure that they each felt cared for, special, best beloved.

That has never stalled her jealous nature.

She eyes the Nonagon; Tyffial is supporting him, a hand on His shoulder, thumb rubbing back and forth comfortingly. The Nonagon stares blankly at the wall. The absent look on His face has become too frequent and familiar for her liking.

Still a little disoriented, she stands, joins them. “My Lord, let me heal you?” The bane of His blessing is always the strange fatigue that doesn’t lessen until some manner of healing is provided Him. It’s always been that way, even though, at His peak, the damage was hardly enough to strain him. In this state, however, He seems as fragile as a leaf. It takes everything Cree has not to give into the fear that she’s feeling. It weeps off of Him in waves. Part of her wonders if His visions were always terrifying and He just couldn’t see it.

The other part of her knows that He has _always_ know exactly where they were headed. That when she dropped everything to follow Him, she was headed down a difficult path. But with Lucien, she’d never felt lonely or afraid. The way He spoke about the World to Come, the Universe Sundered by Flames, and the Shining City where they would find their salvation was so beautiful that any fear was banished by a single word. He’d always been able to do that, to comfort, to inspire.

The Nonagon nods a little at her question and she lays a hand on the sliver of His bare chest between the open, flowing ceremonial robes, resting just above the armor as she pushes her healing energies into Him. Many times past Lucien refused her attentions.

Conflicting emotions tear through her, anger and tenderness warring with one another. He is the Nonagon! Brutal and powerful and effervescent. And death has brought him low, and simultaneously elevated him. None of this is what she expected She wants to lash out at Him in the same degree as she wants to pull Him into her arms and sooth him, or fall to his feet in worship. Frustration ekes its way out her expression. They have been holed up too long, it’s merely frustration at the lack of progress, she’s not _mad_ at Him. She isn’t. She can’t be. He is _never_ wrong.

Not anymore.

And never about this.

“My Lord I-“

Tyffial cuts her off. “We have orders, Cree.”

The elation in his voice is catching. Instantly, she is ashamed for her negative thoughts. How could she ever have doubted their Lord?

“My Lord?” Cree asks the Nonagon directly. Tyffial bristles. “You have orders for us?”

Gleaming red eyes narrow. “Xhorhaas.”

One word answers frustrate her to no avail, but she can’t reproach. This is more than they’ve gotten since they resurrected him. “Of course, Lord Nonagon. Of course we will return home. We have been gone far too long and we have heard nothing from the others who departed by that way after…”

“After I died. The first time.”

Cree holds her breath, and Tyffial forgets that he’s miffed with her just long enough to catch her eye. It’s the most the Nonagon has said at once outside of the visions since she brought him back.

“Yes, my Lord.” Hesitant, Cree shifts. “My Lord, you said something about a Beacon in your last vision. About someone having it. Is it the one? The one stolen for which you first searched?” _And to no avail._

He does not immediately respond. “I cannot say for certain,” comes the measured response. Endlessly she longs for the spark to return to his eyes, for the zeal to colour his voice once more. Anything but this. Anything…

Abruptly, he stands. “We leave now.”

“Now, my Lord?” Tyffial’s eyes widen. “But the others are not yet recovered from your blessing-“

“Wake them. We leave now.”

The other tiefling ducks his head in deference. “Forgive me, my Lord. I will wake them.”

Cree watches the interaction with great interest. Tyffial seems cowed for the moment by the casual nature of the reprimand. There is no worse insult than to be dismissed out of hand, as the Nonagon has just done. Considering the closeness he must have been feeling to Him only moments ago, Cree can only imagine the dark shroud of shame. Tyffial is strong, but his heart is soft.

Deep down, Cree knows that her heart is soft too. Only Zoran is without remorse. But no matter, Tyffial’s loss is her gain.

“Lord Nonagon,” she whispers reverently. “, tell me of the glory of your return?” She is transparent beneath the flicker of His endless red eyes. “Please, my Lord?”

“You know what there is to know.”

Once, He would have jumped for a chance to preach His vision to them over and over again. Cree’s hopes fall into dust, but she accepts the truth of His words anyways. “Yes, my Lord. You are right, my Lord, but I only wish to listen to You speak of it again. It is magnificent.”

Something shifts in his presence. A piece of Him that was jagged and shattered, stuck haphazardly in its spot, slides into place. For a moment, she thinks she sees Him. Really Him. The Nonagon as he was. Not Lucien, not the pretending thing from before, and not the shadow he has been until now. Truly, the Nonagon.

“It will be, Cree. It will be.”

~

_Beneath the blackness of Ghor Dranas’s eternal twilight, Cree can still see the stars. Beside her, Lucien lies lax and languid. She shifts just enough to see that his eyes, glowing like the embers that surely make up his ever-flaming heart, reflect the stars that gleam through the arcane darkness._

_“Cree?” His voice shivers._

_“Yes?” This is a time before she called him Lord. Before she had to stop her treacherous tongue from naming Him Lucien._

_“I think I was made to live forever.”_

_“You will reincarnate with the rest of us in the Luxon’s glory.”_

_“No. Something more. Something bigger. I can feel it, Cree. Just like I feel what I am. I’m going to burn through life like the eternal flame of the Luxon burns through the darkness. We are what we are: creatures made for living, dying, languishing, reincarnating, living, dying, forever and on until the last of the universe is ash again and the gods crumble beyond the reaches of memory. But not me. I will go on forever. And I think it will be lonely.”_

_“Lucien.” She shifts, placing a hand over his forearm. “I will be with you. I will beg the Luxon that in every life, You are my beloved child. Endlessness may be your destiny, but I believe it can be different. You are more than that.”_

_He fixes her in his sights. “Am I?”_

When Cree awakens from the dream-memory, she searches first for her Lord. He is sitting, wakeful, at the edge of their camp. As they travel back the route towards the Run – the only easy way back into Xhorhaas from the Empire – He is growing ever stronger again. The closer they grow to the boarder, the stronger He seems to become. The sickness seems past, but His manner is still abrupt. He speaks more, though with less guile than He used to; it was His charisma that won them for His followers the first time. Now He is more mysterious than cunningly charming.

Where once He fawned his favour on them in equal parts, now it is a coveted rarity. At first, Cree wondered if the other’s loyalty would hold. Now, no longer. His attention has always been a drug, and they are growing desperate for it. In the lull between His deaths and resurrections their lives were purposeless, empty, bleak. The future they hoped for lost with the failure of the ritual.

Now, everything has changed. That coveted future instead hurtles towards them at an alarming rate and for the first time, Cree finds herself questioning if she is ready. The Nonagon’s behaviour does little to counter her newfound nervousness; His mood affects them all. Before, the Great Burning couldn’t have come soon enough, now, Cree fears that it will come sooner than they are prepared to handle.

“Lord Nonagon?” she whispers. When His silence endures, she doesn’t find it encouraging. Cree approaches him cautiously, nervous. Hesitates. Dares. Softly, tentatively speaks. “Lucien?”

He doesn’t react.

The dream is still in her mind. So far and long ago now that it feels a lifetime.

“Once,” she continues. “You told me that You were born only to be endless. Do You remember that night? Beneath the stars outside Ghor Dranas’s eternal night?”

There is a long pause, the indeterminate space of time before her next breath falls.

“No.”

Cree feels the softness in her heart spread and make her weak.

“You do not recall, my Lord?” she asks again, the sinking sensation in her stomach growing worse.

“No, I don’t recall any such night.”

“But surely You must remember something?” She cannot keep the desperation from her voice. He seems to know them, to remember them…He knows the way to bless them…“When You were Lucien, we spoke of many things together. When You came to the order, I was Your first friend and confidant, Your constant companion. Surely You cannot have forgotten all that passed between us, my friend?”

Only silence greets her ears. She takes it in stride, manages to withhold her tears.

“Why are we headed to Xhorhaas, my Lord?”

“Because it is where we need to be now.”

“Like it was with Zadash?”

“Yes.”

Before she can push further, the others are up, feverish from the visions, but awake. So many questions flutter in her heart like caged birds, but the moment is passed and it is too late for her to say any more. They continue on their way shortly thereafter, and, for the first time since His death, Cree truly mourns for her loss.

~

The night they cross into Xhorhaas is still and eerily silent. It feels like the deep breath before the plunge. Cree has made some peace since she last confronted the Nonagon about the past. Returning to their home certainly helps with that. She sniffs the cool evening air for any hint of others nearby. The north country is beastlands, and, though they are all more than capable, it never hurts to be careful. The Nonagon walks just in front of her, and Otis is to her side. Tyffial and Zoran lead the way, each prepared to defend their Lord.

The last dregs of grey light stain the horizon, backing the jagged peaks of the mountains in the far distance. Just as they step out from the pass, the Nonagon stops. His body goes rigid. Otis’s reflexes are faster than her own and he catches Him. They never used to happen as often as they have since she brought Him back. Once, they brought excitement and hope, boosted morale. Now, they’ve grown to be a danger, happening anywhere, any when and Xhorhaas, though their home, has never been a safe place to begin with.

Tyffial immediately draws his weapon, takes up watch with Zoran as Otis lays the Nonagon down on the rocky floor of the mountain pass, leaving Cree to her work. She performs the blood rite, and then kneels by his head waiting.

One hand shoots towards the sky, grasping, fingers curling and locking, muscles so tight that His arm is shaking. He makes not a single sound. Otis cries out or maybe it is Cree herself, she can’t be sure. When she looks up, she sees that Tyffial has turned to watch, near tears as their Lord’s body arches, muscles contracting, the tendons in His neck straining. It’s almost as if there is some force acting on Him as He pushes back against it in turn, holding him suspended. His eyes jitter rapidly in their sockets, sightless (or perhaps, seeing too much), gaze snapped rapt on a nebulous point high above them. His hand tremors and His mouth opens in a silent scream. Heat suffuses the air around them, radiating off of Him. It’s so stifling that Cree’s eyes begin to water and she has to force herself to keep looking at him. She’s never seen anything like it. The bloody sigil of the Eye on His forehead starts to glow with an unearthly light, its rays illuminating hHi face in the dark. Suddenly, the Nonagon’s fruitlessly reaching hand drops hard to the ground. The Eyes patterned into His skin burst violently, as they never have before and his devotees are baptized by the blood that sprays out. It falls like rain over Cree and Otis, covering the dirt and stone and Zoran’s boots. Then, all at once, the force acting on Him ceases and He slams back to the earth with a sighing breath. The blood of the Eye sigil is all but burned away, leaving only its shadow in the form silvery scar.  

For a long moment, Cree thinks He is dead.

_Fear coats her throat like ash, choking as she falls on all fours to crawl to Him, weeping as she watches on in disbelief at His still chest. She hears Zoran screaming. Jurrel leaps towards the spell slinger, His wide, green hands large over her pale throat before the squelch of a hidden blade jams itself between his ribs and he drops her before crumpling to the ground. Otis’s tail twitches and then he’s running, a blur of silver scales, tackling the betrayer bitch to the ground. The others converge on her, but there’s a blip in the air and the place where she was is suddenly empty. Zoran pulls out her maul and takes off running._

_Cree paws at Lucien’s lax face. And in death, it is Lucien she sees. His glory tarnishes and fades and all that is left is the paling mauve of His skin, red eyes still open, dull, empty lifeless…_

She is shocked back from the scene when He takes the slightest, smallest breath. Cree dares not touch Him; for some reason, she fears that it would break the spell cast over them all, waiting for the storm to break and wash over them, cleansing the world in its wake.

The Nonagon blinks, once, twice. Sits up.

There is a dull thud as Otis falls to his knees, then Tyffial and Zoran.

The clouds part overhead and the barest crescent of the larger moon shines down through the jagged cut of the ravine in the mountain side, landing directly on their Lord. He is with them, alert and awake. The throes of the vision are gone.

All Cree’s breath has been stolen away.

“I saw a storm of fire in the sky. It was breaking through the planes.” His face shines, incandescent with silvery light. “I watched as it grew, boiling and writhing. It drew me up towards it, watching me with Nine Eyes as it’s tongues spun and danced, multitudinous wings scorching the air. It was so loud-“ There is aching longing in his voice and rapture playing across his features. “It held me there. It was expanding. I thought it was going to envelope me. I wanted it to envelop me. It was beautiful.” Tears shine in his eyes, but his smile is genuine and bright. “Then it diminished. I reached for it, but it was siphoning back from me, a typhoon of wind. The wind caught me, grasping me, arms of zepherous mist, tried to drag me back to earth…” The shaking smile on his face widened, the tears falling soft, dropping into the dust. “But the flames imploded! Sparking, vibrant, brilliant, consuming… the worlds sundered! The planes shifted. It was an Arrival! And I was rent in two! I watched myself be taken into the flames! I could see myself from the center of the flames! I reached towards myself and I reached back to myself! I was the eye of the storm!”

He turns His head, His resplendent face lifts upwards to the sky in exaltation.

“I watched myself crumble into ash, and then regenerate within the flame over and over again and then it released me and I fell. And then, I woke.”

It is like the old days. Cree sees her own elation reflected back in the faces of her companions. They are all weeping, just as she is. Whatever ailed Him is gone.

He lifts a hand to His horns, removing the gold metal tip cap and slices his thumb open. “I see the tendrils of flame burning between you all. And they lead back to me. We will stalk through the eternal nights of Xhorhaas and I will bring the Light to Ghor Dranas. The Beacon will be there. And the world will burn.”

And Cree will be beside Him when it does.


	3. 3. Rex Imperium

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The end is the beginning is the end is the beginning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you once again to Ali. You're the reason I kept adding to this.  
> Written to a variety of songs from Immediate Music aka Trailerhead:
> 
> Rex Imperium  
> Tears of Blood  
> Pandora's heaven  
> Falling Skies  
> Prelude to Paradise  
> The Reluctant Warrior  
> Rex Imperium Reprise

Everything alters after the vision upon entering Xhorhaas. The Nonagon no longer acts like a terrified child-version of Lucien, helpless and pulled like a ragdoll about by the magic that He wields. He is come into His glory, and then some, Cree suspects. Before His first death, Lucien was always there in part, even if it was but a small part.

This is different.

Truly, reverently awed, Cree is certain that they now walk in the presence of their God. They still call Him by Lucien’s title, but the sentiment is there. They can all feel it, how the tide has changed. He walks as though He is completely weightless, exudes power that leaves them breathless with exhilaration every time He speaks. Completely enthralled as they are, Cree hardly realizes the passage of time before they see Asarius on the horizon.

“Let us go before you, Lord Nonagon, into the city to announce you.” Otis is the one who speaks. There is a gleam in his eyes so bright it is almost feverish.

“We will enter together,” He announces. “When they see me, they will know and understand.”

And they do.

All of them.

They must be able to feel it. He walks just ahead of them, flanked on either side by Tyffial and Zoran, Cree directly behind Him and Otis behind her. As they approach the imposing walls, and people see Him, it starts. Like a wave, they begin to drop to the ground. First the soldiers outside the gate, then the ogres guarding it; average citizens fall to their knees as He passes.

Most know Lucien’s face, or know what the Eyes mean if they don’t. And it isn’t as though they are hard to see. In His ceremonial robes, the Nonagon’s chest is visible to all, including the red Eye over his right pectoral, and the one on His neck and cheek. Like oil, the black fabric ripples silently out behind Him, as He strides into Asarius without once gazing down at the supplicants who reach their hands out towards his feet as he passes by.

It is everything Cree hopes for and more.

* * *

The Nein are in with Lady Zethris when her servant girl rushes through the doors, practically tripping over herself to get to her mistress. Whatever she whispers in the Lady’s ear is beyond any of their reckoning and they are summarily asked to remain where they are while she goes to greet an Important Visitor.

But, of course, they are the Mighty Nein and they cannot help but peek. At first, the angle disallows them to see anything other than the visitor’s booted feet, swathed by a waterfall of shining black fabric, but when Zethris drops to her knees and then prostrates herself, Caleb at least, is treated to a very, very good view of someone entirely too familiar for his liking. Against his back, Caleb feels Jester almost launch forward when Fjord slaps a hand over her mouth to stop her from screeching or calling out.

It turns out that it is not Jester they needed to worry about. Yasha stumbles when she sees him, and they topple forward against the door. Nervously, Caleb’s eyes dart upwards. If they are noticed, it is not evident. Lady Zethris arches her back and looks up at…at…

From her place on the floor, Lady Zethris speaks. “My Lord, Lucien, You are returned to us at last!”

Caleb hesitates to call him Mollymauk.

His hair is longer than before, the black clothes completely uncharacteristic, even if the style is true. But more than anything else, his face lacks any semblance of familiarity that Caleb would have anticipated. On his forehead, Caleb can just about make out the faded silver outline of a scar, shaped like an eye, much like the red ones that pattern his skin. Something in him breaks.

And then, another figure steps forwards, inky black fur gleaming and tail twitching.

Cree.

And worst of all, she sees them.

“You! _Insolent-_ “ Her face contorts into a snarl of rage as she makes towards them, but the person who is Not Molly shoots up a hand and immediately she stops moving.

“Cree.” There is warning in that voice. Warning and power. Caleb shudders.

He lifts his hand to usher her upwards and she stands at his behest. “You have prying eyes, my dear Zethris.” He gestures briefly in their direction and she turns to look. “Come forward.”

To her credit, Caleb notices that Cree doesn’t object, though she looks like she’d mightily like to. Zethris’s eyes are glazed in a strange manner that Caleb doesn’t even want to begin attempting to fathom.

“I told you-“ she starts and then turns back to…Lucien… “I told them to wait outside, My Lord.” Once more, she whirls on them. “You would do well to bow, are you so ignorant? This is-“

“Zethris, there is no need for that.” Not Molly says, smiling uncannily. Caleb feels it like ice skating down his spine. “I know these people. Though, I must admit, they do not all look familiar at first glance.” Not Molly lifts his slender hand almost casually and Caleb watches as his polymorphed tiefling body falls away. “There. The Mighty Nein in all their glory.” He zeroes in on Beau’s face. “You. Come forward.”

Perplexed, Beau makes a face but steps forward despite her confusion. Not Molly steps forward to meet her, everyone else looking on with breaths held.

Deliberately, he lifts his hands to his bared chest, fingers framing the silver starburst scar at the center of his sternum. Beau goes rigid.

“You know this scar, Beauregard Lionett.” It is a statement of fact, not a question. It takes Caleb a moment to recognize that he’s used a last name and Beau doesn’t seem to be denying it. With just his right hand – the one over which runs the snake and thus another red Eye, he lifts Beau’s own and bring it flat against the scar.

Caleb has never seen Beau shake so much, not since…Not since Molly died.

“This scar was born in your name.”

“M-Molly?” Her words are barely a breath, and Caleb can see Not Molly cock his head just ever so slightly.

“You are a keeper of knowledge.” He releases her, but she keeps her hand there, fingertips just grazing his skin. He holds the same hand out to Cree who dutifully, if reluctantly slices his thumb with her claw. Red blood pools in the cut. “Receive my blessing, and with it the knowledge that I impart on you.”

Beau doesn’t move, frozen in place by what may as well be horror as Not Molly lifts his thumb and traces it, bloody, across her forehead, and then pushes lightly at her. Instantaneously, she drops to the ground, convulsing. The others, spell finally broken, rush to her. Caleb stays stock still, watching and observing when he’s not stuck in shock.

Cree looks disgusted, but resigned. Zethris is amazed.

“Lord Lucien, You know these people? You know them well enough to impart Your blessing?” The drow says.

“Provide them lodging, in addition to that which I know you have already sent the servants to prepare for myself and my followers. They are to be treated as my guests.” She bows to him and mutters to one of her servants while he snaps and a silvery dragonborn– another tomb taker? – steps forward. “Otis.” He acknowledges and then whispers something to him, unreadable eyes never leaving the Nein.

All the while, they’ve completely ignored Beau, laying on the floor, shaking. Jester is shaking too, but for very different reasons. “Are you just going to ignore our friend?” she calls out angrily just as the dragonborn, apparently Otis kneels down beside her.

“Otis will watch over Beauregard Lionett,” says Not Molly before he turns and walks away, Lady Zethris, Cree and another tiefling at his heels. There’s a half-elf woman who remains behind, watching them, who follows them even when one of Zethris’s servants summons them to follow her to the rooms that have been prepared.

When Yasha stands her ground, Caleb noticed the half-elf place a hand on her maul.

“Yash, come on.” Fjord says softly, one hand on her upper shoulder.

“Will she be alright?” Yasha asks the half-elf pointedly.

After a moment’s deliberation, the half-elf speaks. “The vision is a gift from Our Lord the Nonagon. Otis will watch over her.” There’s no room to be brokered for argument, but, additionally, it does not appear that they are going to hurt Beau, nor that they even want to. On the contrary, Caleb notices how Otis seems to be praying by her side, how reverently protective they almost seem. “Our Lord saw fit to bless her, we will let no harm befall her.”

Yasha gives up the ghost and they leave, following the servant out, the half-elf trailing behind them. They are led to an antechamber that opens into two more rooms, neither of which, it appears, have any other exits. Nott puts her eye to the keyhole and swears under her breath.

“Miss half-elf is guarding the door. We’re stuck here.”

“At least we’re stuck someplace that’s comfortable.” Caduceus says, his first contribution since the encounter. Between his fingers he rubs the leaf of some unfamiliar plant.

“A comfortable prison is still a prison.” Caleb replies.

Yasha looks stormy, Nott keeps watch and Fjord sits down on the settee, disconsolate. Jester is in tears.

“Guys! That was Molly out there, we can’t just-“

“It was not Mollymauk. You would do well to disabuse yourself of that notion, Jester,” Caleb hisses, only half noticing Yasha go very still in his peripherals, while Jester flinches at his sharp tone. “That thing was _not_ Mollymauk. He reeks of power and that frightens me greatly. Whatever the Tomb Takers have brought back with them, it is not the one we called friend. And I am not hopeful that we will ever see that one again.”

At first, Jester only sniffs, before breaking unceremoniously into tears, sinking to the ground as she sobs. It’s Nott who comforts her, smoothing the hair between her horns softly, holding Jester’s head to her chest and murmuring.

Fjord catches Caleb’s eye, but says nothing and he knows automatically that the half-orc is thinking the same thing. They are in over their heads.

Lazily, Caduceus’s vision lands on the door. “There’s people talking outside.” There’s only the fraction of a second before the door is opened, sans knock.

It is the half-elf and a servant. “The Lord Nonagon asks for Yasha Nydoorin to be brought to him immediately.”

Without hesitation, Yasha goes. None of them stop her.

Five minutes pass. The next person at the door is the dragonborn, helping a dazed looking Beau into the room. There’s a bloody eye drawn on her forehead, one drop running down the side of her nose. Immediately, Fjord and Caduceus go to help her, taking her from the dragonborn, who smiles at them, after his fashion before exiting the room. They lay her on the settee, where she closes her eyes and promptly falls asleep.

Ten more minutes go by.

Twenty.

Yasha has not returned.

On the half hour, by Caleb’s count, the door opens again. “The Lord Nonagon requests the presence of the one called Caleb Widogast.”

Jester looks at him and shakes her head. Regardless, he stands. Nott nods at him, and he back at her, and he follows the servant out. With careful eyes, Caleb watches the girl for any signs of distress. By comparison to what he expected, she looks almost overcome with elation. When they are just far enough away from the half-elf, Caleb asks in a low voice “Do you like the Nonagon?”

Shocked, she stops in her tracks, looking at him with wide eyes. “He is the Nonagon!” This is all she says, as though her reply is enough in answer. There’s a low anxious hum that starts in the back of Caleb’s mind at the implications.

The chamber that she leads him to is guarded on the outside by…

“Yasha?”

Though she doesn’t speak, Yasha gives Caleb a look that he can’t mistake. _I’m fine. Don’t say anything. Later._

She lets them through without issue.

Instantly, Caleb is overwhelmed by the scent, something strange, familiar but yet nearly unidentifiable. Metallic. The interior is beautiful, more decadent than anything Caleb has seen from Xhorhaas yet. Walls draped in dark mauve velvet are accented by soft gold coils of embroidery. Vases in obsidian and gilt sit on pedestals of the finest dark wood at either end of the darkly draped double window. The Nonagon luxuriates on a deep, wine red divan, watching Caleb from the moment he enters the door. The little servant girl exits out behind him and Yasha pulls the door shut. Halfway into the room, Caleb stops and waits.

The room is suddenly oppressive. Despite its large grandeur, it feels too tight, too close and Caleb feels a second set of eyes on him. Behind the Nonagon, Caleb finally notices the other person in the door. The tiefling with black eyes like voids. He stands in a solid display, hands on his hips.

The Nonagon lifts a hand dismissively. “Go guard the door with Yasha, Tyffial. Caleb Widogast will not be a bother.”

Jaw set, Tyffial moves from behind the divan, stalking haughtily – and indeed angrily – past Caleb, so close, that he can almost feel their clothes brush.

Tyffial, it seems, does not like being dismissed. Caleb finds he cannot blame him.

After a long moment of pregnant silence, the Nonagon stands, rounding on Caleb, who notices for the first time that, though he remains in the expensive ceremonial robes, which have been pulled closed more tightly at the waist, he is now barefoot.

“You are Caleb Widogast?”

Now that he is less thrown by the appearance of the other person, Caleb notices that the Nonagon does not share Molly’s accent, though they speak in the same register and with the same tonal qualities. The inflection too, is different. More Xhorhaasian, though not quite the same as they have become used to. Of all of them, he sounds most like Lady Zethris.

Like a Krynn.

“Ja. I am. How do you know my name? Did you ask Yasha?”

The Nonagon smiles. Discomfort settles in Caleb’s chest as he realizes that the look with which he has been fixed is entirely too inhuman, entirely too similar to a cat suavely eyeing its unsuspecting prey. The blood rushes from his face and his hands feel cold, clammy.

“Something like that. But I am not just now concerned with Yasha Nydoorin.”

The Nonagon moves with a svelte grace, all bottled up power and soft, shushing shadows in his wake, circling Caleb, who tries his hardest to stay perfectly still, much like the rabbits that he’d seen his original Frumpkin stalk and devour with ease. He knows that, should the Nonagon pounce, there will be nothing he can do about it, and instead gives in to his fate. No matter what he does, he knows that he cannot match the subtle power that this unearthly thing bearing the face of their friend exudes.

“What are you concerned with…” The ‘My Lord’ goes unspoken and the Nonagon almost smirks, fine lips twitching at the corners, but it’s the sparkle in his jeweled red eyes which convinces Caleb of his genuine amusement. A removed, aloof amusement, but amusement all the same.

“I am currently concerned with you, Caleb Widogast.”

“I am nothing.”

The Nonagon’s eyes narrow. “That is categorically untrue, little Wizard, and you know it.”

_Do not test me. Do not fight me._

Caleb sucks his cheeks in and bites down to keep himself from speaking out of turn.

“I was hoping, Caleb Widogast,” the Nonagon says. “That you might share with me some information.” There is a long, considering pause as the Nonagon rounds him once more before coming to stand some three feet away. “About the one you and your friends call ‘Molly’.”

That does not encourage Caleb in the least.

“He was…our friend.” Caleb hedges carefully, mind racing. “You…ah, forgive me… you seem to know how he died.”

The scar is still visible, if a little more hidden then before.

“Yes.” The Nonagon’s gaze is impossible to break, and Caleb feels an almost unnatural pull. “I know many things, Caleb Widogast, but not all things. What was he like?”

The question throws Caleb off. “He…he was…bright.” The word falls into the soft cushion of the room’s draped walls. “He was carefree and careless both. Devoted to those he loved. He enjoyed life.”

“Hmm.”

The Nonagon’s eyes flicker almost imperceptibly over Caleb’s form, but he feels the assessment as clearly as though he were being poked and prodded. It goes on for an uncomfortably long time, though it is no more than a few, sparse seconds in the long, long minutes that have passed since he first caught sight of the Nein peeking out from behind the door to witness his arrival.

“He does seem to have enjoyed many things in his time.” The Nonagon lifts an arm, and the sleeves of his robe hang open, slipping to his side to reveal the much tattooed arm. “Art,” the Nonagon offers by way of explanation. “Violence.” He brushes his fingers over the sliver crosshatch of scars around his chest and neck. Once more, he catches Caleb’s eye. “Decadence.”

Something settles in the Nonagon’s posture. Caleb swallows thickly.

“I know that this body once desired yours.”

Before Caleb full processes what the Nonagon has said, the robe hits the ground soundlessly and a swath of naked, purple skin is on display before him.

Caleb is speechless.

“You are more than welcome, Little Wizard, to act upon your own desire. That is another thing I know. That you desired this body in return. Once.” He waits. “Still.”

For all that Caleb has ever been able to call on his charm, he doesn’t know what to do now, when more than just the naked body of what once was Mollymauk Tealeaf is bared between them. His own, long suppressed emotions sit in the back of his throat, ready to be spilled on the luxuriant ebony tiled floor.

“I…I…do not…want…” Caleb heaves a breath. “No.”

The Nonagon’s lips twitch again. “Then you do not have to. I will not take that which it not freely given me.”  Seamlessly he bends over, lifts the robe from the ground, and puts it back on loosely, though he does not tie it shut again. Situating himself once more on the divan, the Nonagon waits for Caleb to reignite the conversation.

A thousand questions brim to over full in Caleb’s mind. But only one sticks out. “Why ask me here, and ask me all sorts of questions, if all you wanted was to sleep with me?”

“You misunderstand, little Wizard.” The Nonagon does smile at him then. “I asked you here so that I would receive honest answers. Yasha Nydoorin is too devoted to this body. She would only tell me what I wanted to hear. Cree is much the same. You are rational above almost all else. You would tell me the truth. And so far, you have.”

“Do you…” he hesitates. The door is far behind him, but Caleb still feels like he’s backed up against a wall. “That is, do you have other questions…still…”

“What did he know?”

Confused, Caleb takes a moment. “Know? What do you mean?”

“What did he _know_?”

There is an emphasis behind the word that brings Caleb to sudden light. “Ah, nothing. He knew nothing. He no memory. Only what Cree told him. A name…Lucien…and a few other remote details that made little sense without context.”

Rolling his shoulders back, the Nonagon considers Caleb’s words. “Could he _See_ , as I See?”

The memory rolls over Caleb, Molly with the cards, showing Jester her future, considering them now, now that they know the truth of the Gentleman…

“Perhaps. If he did, he was not wholly aware of it. He used…erm…cards.”

“I understand. Thank you, Caleb Widogast, for answering my questions.”

“Of course, L-Lord Nonagon.” _Don’t say it. Don’t say it._ “But then, You are not really called the Nonagon at all, are You?” He’s hedging all his bets on a theory, but Caleb is used to making calculated risks, and, for some reason, this one just feels right. He takes a deep breath as he feels the patient weight of Not Molly’s eyes on him, neither angry nor reproachful. “Luxon.”

“Oh, Little Wizard.” The Luxon stands now, smiling genially, even if he moves like a predator. Caleb’s instincts don’t know which to trust. “It is late, and now it is time for you to sleep.”

Tightly, Caleb squeezes his eyes shut as the Luxon approaches him. A hand takes him by the chin, thumb dragging down over his lower lip, torturously slow. “There is a bed here for you; use it, that you might not disturb your friends. I do not require sleep and shall not bother you while you do. You have My word.”

In response, Caleb cannot help but wet his lips. The hand remains, holding his chin half a second longer before it finally drops away and the Luxon moves past him and into one of the adjoining rooms. The moment the door closes, Caleb can breathe freely again. No longer is the air thick and close and cloying; the overwhelming scent of molten metal, burning carbon dissipates instantly. Mind racing, Caleb enters the bedroom. He doesn’t bother to lock the door. What does it matter, when the Luxon – a living god in mortal form – is on the other side?

For some reason, Caleb is inclined to take Him at His word. Unable to fall so easily into sleep, Caleb lets his thoughts swirl and form, recombine into a plan. Even if it is a dangerous one, any plan is better than none.

 

Come morning, Caleb awakens to find himself untouched, as promised. The antechamber is empty, and the door to the other room is open, revealing it also to be empty. Shiftily, he opens the door out into the hall and finds it unguarded. Allowing his mind to lead his feet, Caleb finds his way back to the set of chambers were the Nein has been held. The half elf is still there, standing guard. Wordlessly, she opens the door; it is difficult to tell if she is watching him with any particular emotion or not – her face seems always to be darkly unreadable.

The door closes behind him and he is suddenly set upon by the Nein, rushing to him with a torrent of limbs and a cacophony of words.

“I am fine,” he reassures them. “I assure you, I am fine. Nothing is wrong.”

“Look me in the eye and say it, Caleb.”

Nott’s lantern eyes glow with fear.

“I am fine. Nothing is wrong. I promise, Schatz.”

Satisfied, Nott hugs his legs and steps back. The others give him room, and it is only when he steps further into the room that he notices Yasha, quiet in the corner, watching him.

“Hallo, Yasha.”

“Hello, Caleb.”

“Would you two fuckin’ quit it with this cryptic bullshit, I _need_ all of us to _fuckin’ talk to one another right the fuck now!”_

Relief washes over Caleb. Beauregard too, it seems, is fine.

“We will all tell what we have to tell.” Caleb sits himself down on the floor in front of a low table and pulls out his books. “Yasha, I would ask you to go first.”

Mouth opening and closing like a fish on land, Beau plops to the floor beside him, shocked.

“Then you, Beauregard. And then, I will speak.”

“Yasha, didn’t come back until this morning, like you,” Jester says.

Without moving from her corner, Yasha clears her throat a little bit. “He asked me some questions. They didn’t mean much, I don’t think. I don’t know. He wanted to know if I was devoted to Molly. I told him the truth. That I was. Devoted to him.” She shrugs. “He told me to guard the door, if I loved Molly. So I guarded the door. In the morning, when he left the room, he took the other guard with him and told me that I could go back this room. That is all.”

Caleb nods. It lines up with the conversation he had the night before, and he fits the extra information into the still formulating plan.

Beau clicks her tongue, looking away from the expectant faces of the others. The bloody mark has been washed away from her forehead. “I don’t fucking know what happened, okay? One minute I was looking at M-“ her voice chokes off and she shakes herself, as if to recalibrate. “One minute I was looking at _him_ and the next I was seeing…fuck.” A sharp puff of air leaves her nose. “There was a lot of fire. It looked like…I dunno. Something. Something. A creature? It was exploding. Darkness was…chased away. I think it was Ghor Dranas.” She shivers, pulling a leg up and hugging it tight to her chest. “Fuck. I felt…like I was going to explode too. Like the fire was in me. Like was burning inside. But-“

Midsentence, she stops. Caleb catches Fjord looking from Jester to Clay and then back to Beau.

“But what?” he asks her, finally.

“But I kinda liked it. It felt…real good. Like…emotionally…orgasmic. I dunno.” She shakes her head. “I don’t know what I saw.”

Fjord whistles low.

“Well, fuck.”

That about sums it up, Caleb thinks, and then all eyes are on him, waiting, in the equal opposite of the Luxon. Impatiently.

“I did not sleep with Him.”

Visibly, they relax.

“He…invited me to His bed, yes, but I did not sleep with Him. He asked me many questions about Mollymauk. I answered them honestly. I…asked a few questions of my own. I think by now, you would all agree with me when I say that that is very, very far from Mollymauk, ja?”

They all nod.

“Neither, is it, I think, the Nonagon. I think…I think that this…Luxon – the Luxon – as taken mortal form within Molly’s body. And it is my opinion that, though He is extremely powerful, He does not seem to be...evil. Were we to offer Him some sort of gift, it would stand to reason that He might find us in his favour, and reward us.” Caleb sends a pointed look to Jester. “It is for this reason that I believe we must give him the Beacon.”

The immediate outrage tells Caleb everything he needs to know about how well this is going over.

“Please…” They are all so loud, Caleb's voice fades into the background. Beau is red in the face, Fjord has his serious look on, and Nott and Jester are each shrieking at one another. “Please…” Caleb's second try is just as futile as the first. “I have something to say!” He practically bellows the words and every stops to look at him. “Please consider that He may already know that we have it, taking into account the power I believe Him to be capable of. He is a god! In mortal form! He could kill us all if He wanted to, I am sure. Perhaps, He is waiting to see what we will do, if we will make the choice to show it to Him ourselves. Better we do so now and garner His favour than have Him believe we kept it from Him deliberately.”

Caduceus nods at that. Fjord looks more frightened than anything else. Dealing with obscure gods has never seemed to work in his favour. Jester seems torn, but it is Yasha who agrees immediately.

“Yes. We will ask him now.”

“Now? Yash, I'm not sure that that's-” Fjord starts, but Nott interrupts him.

“Yeah. You know what? Okay.” She crossed her arms firmly. “This is a good plan. I like this plan. Let's get him alone though...Caleb do you think he'd have a-a-ahhh- a _secret meeting_ with us. He likes you... could you arrange that?”

Caleb thinks of the Luxon’s heated gaze, of his faint smiles.

“Ja. I think I could do that, although I will perhaps call it a private audience instead of ‘secret meeting’?”

They all, though some only with reluctance, agree in the end, though they have Beau ask the half-elf still guarding their door to take them to The Luxon. While she eyes Caleb with contempt, Beau she seems to regard with curiosity.

“I am Zoran,” she says softly as she leads them to the chambers that Caleb had left only but an hour prior. “May I ask what it was that you saw? Would you consent to share the glory of the Nonagon’s vision with me?”

Beau’s eyebrows draw up to her hairline, the small gold piercing through the left one, Caleb notices, is still stained by gore. “Uh, I saw a creature in flames. Or…of flames? It disintegrated the shadows?”

Zoran beams and Caleb takes careful note. Of the people he assumes to be Tomb Takers, all of them are devoted to Lucien, or the Nonagon, worshiping His as a god, yet - Caleb is almost positive, so sure, he can just about taste it – none of them seem to realize just exactly who they have been traveling with. And he can’t help but wonder why the Luxon has not revealed to them the truth, when he would as good as answer Caleb of all people outright.

The door is guarded by the same tiefling man as before and, when Zoran approaches, he lets them in without a word. The Luxon is sitting in the same place he was when Caleb first entered the room the night before, but this time, standing behind him is Cree. One of her paws is laying on the back of the divan, the other hangs ready at her side. The stifling heat is back; something tells Caleb that this (and the prominent smell of molten metal) is directly a result of the god in their midst.

Seemingly unbothered, the Luxon gives them a soft smile, complete with the same predatory gaze as Caleb had endured prior.

“Good morning. I trust you have slept well?” It is Caleb he looks at when he says it, though he doesn’t wait for an answer before continuing. Magnanimously he opens he arms. “What can I do for you, this day?”

In but a few simple words and movements, the Luxon has effortlessly reinforced His position in their life, and theirs in His. Beau shifts restlessly beside Caleb and Nott looks up at him, reassuringly.

Caleb takes a step forward. “My Lord Nonagon, we were hoping that You might grant us a private audience to discuss some things of a sensitive matter and utmost importance, we believe, to Your Eminence.”

A smile spreads oil slick across His enigmatic face. “Cree, My dear, leave us.”

“All of them? But My-“

“Leave us. They pose Me no threat, My most devoted one.”

Caleb recognizes flattery when he hears it; Cree is assuaged, though only just, and takes her leave, refusing to look at Caleb at all. When she is gone and the Nein are along with the Luxon, it is Beau who steps forward. Though His eyes focus on her, they still flicker back to Caleb occasionally. If telepathy were within the Luxon’s capabilities, Caleb is sure that, with the degree to which the god seems to be preoccupied by Caleb’s very presence, he’d be hearing the subtle, sultry tones in his head at that very moment.

“We’ve, uh, got a proposition for you, uh….oh…Mighty Nonagon?” Beau’s voice lilts up accidentally in question at the end and she cringes at her execution of their first step.

Leaving forward, slowly, deliberately, the robe falling open exposing His chest further, the Luxon steeples His fingers. “I will hear your proposition, but there are a few things in order first.” His gaze leaves Caleb behind, settles on Fjord. “You.”

The rustle behind Caleb send an image into his brain, of Fjord gesturing shocked to his own person.

“Yes. The Chosen of Uk’atoa. Blasphemous heretic.”

Audiably, Fjord gulps.

“Do you serve the serpent?” A demand, not a request.

“Uh, I…I don’t even really remember…making any…” Fjord’s words tumble from his mouth like a rockslide, inelegant for once, and bumbling. Any talk of Uk’atoa automatically seems to make him such, for all his silvery tongue. “I don’t remember how this happened to me, and right now old Slithering and Slimey’s not really all that happy with me, and I’m not particularly dedicated to uh…doing his bidding right now, if that’s what you mean.”

Satisfied, the Luxon sits back. “Good. Now, I will hear your proposition.”

It’s abrupt and throws everyone off for a moment, but Beau clears her throat. “We have something that we think is Yours,” she accentuates the word. “And we’d like to return it to you.” She pauses. “For a finder’s fee, of course.”

Smirking the Luxon settles himself further. “Of course. By all means.”

“Jester?”

Jester slips the straps of her hot pink bag from her shoulders and hands it to Beau who, however reluctantly, removes the Beacon and it’s stand. The Luxon stands immediately, moving with a sudden speed and feline grace that the Nein, save Caleb have had yet to experience. One slender hand caresses the air around the Beacon and it rises from Beau’s hands and into the air, where it hovers over the Luxon’s outstretched palm, leaving the stand completely ignored.

“What reward do you desire?”

It is the first time that the Luxon’s attention has been completely diverted from Caleb since he entered the room, and it feels like coming up to the surface while still treading water desperately.

“Mollymauk. Give me back Mollymauk.”

Yasha’s voice does not waver. It does not falter. It is not pleading nor desperate, not angry nor too soft. All turn to look at her. Like the draped walls the shadows of emotion cascade across her cold porcelain face, the raven wings of loss and grief.

Emotionless, the Luxon stares her down, a feat of which, Caleb knows, not many are capable. And then, shockingly, Yasha wavers, turns her head and looks away.

“This body was born for My use, regardless of which soul once lay claim to it. And for the time being, it will remain in My use.”

No one dares to fight Him.

“But surely there are other favours you desire?” The coldness of his prior tone is lost to the warm richness of his enticing offer. Caleb feels the solid dread that drops like a rock in his stomach; to have lost Molly once to death, and now to have lost him forever to a god.

Yasha drops to her knees, but says nothing, looking up with at the god, anguish painted on her face. “I have lost everything I have loved.” It is a plea, though a reluctant one.

Standing above her, the Luxon lays a hand on her cheek. “When My need for a mortal form has passed, I will return your Mollymauk to you.”

No one moves.

Caleb considers his options, considers the path laid out before them. They’ve had no hope of finding the source of the portals, and their spy is not someone they can give up. Out of options, one presented itself, and the scale in his brain is still working to determine the worth.

It is not a hard decision.

Just as he opens his mouth, Nott speaks.

“There is a man, a Halfling man named Yeza Brenatto. It is our job to retrieve him,” she crafts carefully. “He’s in Ghor Dranas and we don’t know that he’ll still be alive by the time we get there, and currently, we have no way of getting him out.” She turns to the others, speaking more to them than to the Luxon. “Is this an acceptable trade?”

Caleb keeps silent. Her eyes linger last on him, and he tries to convey his support through all the warmth of expression he can muster. Only once they have all nodded does she look back.

There is a knowing glint in the Luxon’s eyes. “A writ of release, is what you wish? It shall be yours, _Veth Brenatto_. Your husband will be safe.”

 “How do you-“

“I know many things, though not all things. I will give you back your beacon until such time as I have written your letter.” At his urging, but of its own volition, the Beacon floats back into the bag and without adieu, they are dismissed.

They spend the day working on the portal job anyways. Nothing comes of it. They are all distracted. Yasha looks fraught and lost, Nott is preoccupied by thoughts of her soon to be freed husband. The rest, save Caduceus, who is as always unflappable, are shaken. When prodded on the streets, Beau is more violent in her reactions than she has been in while, while Jester’s antics have lessened. Fjord is irritable at best.

At around noon, when the leads have dried up, and their patience along with it, Caleb breaks from the group and returns to the Aurora tower while the others head to the Four Corners to eat. Only Caduceus watches him go with a knowing eye, the promise of some future talk. Caleb pays him no mind.

Though his walk is not long, he overhears many whispers; the names ‘Nonagon’ and ‘Lucien’ on many lips, muttered in many ears, spreading like wildfire. It makes him think of Beau’s vision. At turns he is both envious and grateful – while he desires to have seen the vision himself, all the better for to understand it, something that itches in the back of his brain screams at the thought, and he knows that it is for the better.

Cree is waiting for him when he enters. The standoff that follows is entirely too reminiscent of what _could_ have happened had their sessions with the Moorbounders gone poorly.

Her catlike nostrils flare, ears and tail twitching, looking at him like he is competition. Like she fears him. Suddenly, the Tomb Taker’s dislike of him is revealed.

It’s jealousy.

The tabaxi’s eyes are positively green with it.

“What do you want, Cree?”

No feral pleasantries preclude her assault. “What sort of mortal-“ (And not one of their own number, for that is the salt in the wound) “-are you to seek the honour of laying with the Nonagon?”

“Only he who was asked to do so.” _And he who denied your god in turn_. He doesn’t say it. Somehow, he thinks that would be the worse offence.

Foam flecks her snarling snout. Caleb can smell her hot breath on his cheek as her claws extend, piercing the front of his coat, pulling him in. Terror ratchets his heartbeat beyond the natural rhythm, but he manages to keep his expression collected and calm, even if she can smell his fear.

“You do not deserve such a blessing.”

“I know.”

Abruptly the claws retract and Caleb drops a little back to the ground – he hadn’t even known that she’d lifted him, despite the silken rippling of her muscles. With a huff, she leaves him alone in the entryway, debating his course of action.

There is only one option, and he knows it.

The long walk down the hallway feels oppressive, as though the walls narrow to a point the farther he goes, but also inclined upwards, so that his progress feels slow and laborious. He blinks. The door is before him. No one guards it, and yet he is certain that the Luxon will be waiting within.

Depressing the handle, it clicks, swinging open and Caleb steps inside, closing it behind him.

Pressure fills his ears, the heat and metallic scent stronger than before. At first glance, Caleb sees nothing. It is his presence that Caleb feels first, tingling up the back of his neck, and then the gentle caress of the Luxon’s hands as they slide over and down his shoulders, heedless of the grime and the cat piss and everything else.

The Luxon does not care.

“Little Wizard.”

There is no surprise in His tone.

“Lord Luxon.”

The god in Molly’s body sweeps out and around, but his emotion is impossible to discern.

Shrugging his shoulders, Caleb’s coat and scarf slip off his body and drop to the floor. Carefully, with trembling hands, Caleb removes the holster that holds his beloved books and bends to set it gently on the ground on top of the coat. The shirts pull over his head with ease, leaving him bare chested. All that remains is to undo the fastenings on his trousers. He gives a little push and they, along with his smallclothes, drop to the floor, leaving him bare.

He’s goose pimpled and shivering, but he stands before the Luxon unafraid.

“I wish to make a deal. I have something that You desire, and in return, You might give me that which I desire.”

Almost before the words leave his mouth, the Luxon cuts him off.

“No.”

Caleb thinks of Nott’s face as he hoped it would be when she realized… _Veth’s_ face. The sinking sensation that accompanies the denial is the first thing to cause his façade to crack. 

“A kiss then,” Caleb presses, desperate. “for certainly you desired that as well as my body.”

“Did you not hear Me?” His voice is deathly quiet. “Did you not care to listen to My words? I do not want that which is not freely given, Caleb Widogast. And this is not freely given, if a deal is what you wish to gain from it.”

Unbidden, Caleb drops to his knees. “I _want this_.”

“You do not.” The harshness of His voice is jarring and Caleb stares at the floor, willing away hot tears. “You want your Mollymauk, if you want anything. You want your friend’s happiness. You do not want this.”

The most terrible thing is that the Luxon, of course, is right.

Caleb does not want. A hand is placed on his head, talons grasping, scratching lightly at his scalp as fingers tangle in his hair and his head wrenches back, so the he is forced to gaze up at the god.

“If you are so set on giving yourself over to me, Caleb Widogast,” He says. “then worship me instead."

The hand in his hair loosens. Panting, Caleb tries not to shake more than he already is as the lavender hand slides down from his hair, smoothing over his cheek to his chin, where the fingers curl and lift him, urging him to stand. When he is once again eye level with the Luxon, the hand curls out, cupping his cheek almost tenderly.

Caleb wants to scream, wants to bolt, his rabbit heart practically jumping out his chest as all the prey senses he ever developed start ringing in alarm, a cacophonous pounding of blood in his temples.

“Worship Me, little Wizard, and you will get more than your halfling friend’s true form back. Worship Me and I will grant you power beyond your wildest imaginings. Worship Me and achieve your true desires. I deal in truth and light, in rebirth and regeneration. I am Life. I am Entropy.” His eyes flare with sudden fire and the room grows even warmer than before. Caleb is half to sobs at the gentle touch of the Luxon’s molten palm. “Do you not wish to set things right? Do you not wish to burn the world that exists and start anew? Do you not yearn for the ability go back, to make it so that you never murdered your parents? Are you not greedy with the thirst for this power? Do you not crave to burn away the darkness and the shadow? I expose the world for what it is. I remake it. I am Destruction and Creation. And I would share with you My power, so that you may do so in My name.”

When Caleb finds his words, they are but the whisper of a moths wing in the overpowering loudness of his own heartbeat. “How…”

“You are already on a path that serves My purposes.” The Luxon’s free hand presses over the center of Caleb’s chest, and it feels like He might melt right through Caleb’s chest and simply grab his hart with his bare hand. “You will burn with My Fire forever. It will live within the core of your soul and never extinguish. Do you accept My bargain?”

“J-ja.” He’s breathless and heady on the promises, on the images that float through his mind of his parents smiling at him, of Nott happy and whole with her family, of Astrid and Eodwulf…

“Then, Caleb Widogast,” The Luxon’s eyes burn into Caleb’s own. There is only the two of them, only the pounding of Caleb’s heart and the searing heat of the Luxon’s presence. “Seal our pact.”

He does so with a kiss.

It’s impulsive.

It’s nothing like he imagined it would be to kiss Molly.

Molly would have been soft and supple. The Luxon _burns._ Caleb feels it on his lips, in mouth, on his tongue, in this throat, scalding him as he is filled with the Light.

The kiss itself lasts no more than a few seconds, is nothing more than a press of lips, but Caleb feels it in his stomach, feels the Fire, just like the Luxon warned him. Yes, a warning. Only now does Caleb recognize it for what it truly was.

When they part, and Caleb opens his eyes, what he sees both enraptures and completely awes him. The Luxon is transcendent, ascendant. There are cracks through His lilac skin, deepened to a dusky palatine, cracks through which His true nature shows through. A blaze of red light, curling and fluttering, like something threatening to break through, glows within the fractures in the god’s physical façade, otherworldly, ethereal, terrible and grand.

The Luxon bites down hard on His lip and pulls His hand away from Caleb’s cheek to wet his finger on the blood there before bringing it to Caleb’s forehead, where He draws the crude symbol – the same that now marrs Molly’s forehead, and the same He drew on Beau.

“Receive my favour,” He murmurs, and Caleb knows no more.

When he wakes, it is Veth and not Nott who is hovering over him, worriedly.

“Oh, Caleb,” She bites her lip, wretchedly. “What did you do?”

* * *

The Nein leave for Ghor Dranas, a letter in hand, stamped with Lord Lucien, the Nonagon’s personal seal.

Cree watches them go, hollow inside, before she returns to the Aurora Tower. Unsurprisingly, He awaits her in His chambers.

“My Lord, Nonagon.” She kneels before Him.

“You have questions, Cree, My best beloved.”

“Yes, my Lord.”

_Cree, I have questions._

_Whatever you need, Lucien. I will do my best to always answer you._

_Always?_

_Yes. Always._

“Then ask.”

“What happened…” _With the wizard. What happened to You? What happened to the way things were?_ “What happened the night we entered into Xhorhaas?”

The Nonagon shifts in His seat.

“There is no need to be nervous, Cree. The time is come.”

The words echo in her memory, mockingly. But it does not matter. Nothing else matters now. Nothing else has mattered for a long, long time.

_Has the time come yet, Lucien?_

_Yes, Cree. The time has come. Can I count on you?_

_Until the end of the universe. Until the end of being and time. Until the beginning comes again. I pledge myself to you, Lucien._

_Then we shall discover our path together._

_Your path, Lucien._

_Ours._

Cree bows her head, banishes her jealousy. Her Lord’s servants will eventually be many, but she is still His high priestess. She walks beside Him, sleeps beside Him, performs His rites and rituals. She is loyal. Above all, Cree is loyal.

 “I am with you, My Lord. To the end, and until the beginning finds us again.”


	4. 4. Falling Skies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Caleb deals with the fallout of his new pact.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was convinced by a few awesome people to write two more chapters. 
> 
> Songs for this chapter are:  
> Falling Skies - Immediate Music  
> and   
> The Prophecy - From: The Dune Soundtrack by Brian Eno

_ Look through My eyes. _

_ Look through My eyes and see the Truth. _

_ Look through My eyes and see That Which Is To Come. _

_ Look through My eyes and see what you will have wrought. _

_ Look and see, Caleb Widogast… _

 

The world is burning.

The world is burning and Caleb cannot look away. Frozen in the middle of a firestorm, wind and flame whipping around him, a maelstrom of energy and heat, growing larger and larger as it consumes everything around him, even the ground, which crumbles, falling out from beneath his feet. Caleb scrabbles at the air for purchase and finds none, but he does not plummet through to the molten core of the world. High, sweltering winds surround him, coalesce in a protective barrier as he curls in on himself, trying to hide his face away from the terrible allure of the flame.

But he cannot hide.

There is no hiding when the Fire is the only thing there is.

There is no hiding when the Fire is within him.

It starts like a hunger pang and grows, swelling. It doesn’t burn the way fire usually does, the way Caleb is used to. This Fire doesn’t char and devour. Instead, it feels like his every nerve is sparking with energy, like liquid light is running through his veins, searing hot, but not destructive, funneling straight into his heart, replacing his blood and boiling what remains.

 

_ You will know power, Little Warlock. _

_ You will know My touch. _

 

Caleb dares to look. The flames are wings, innumerable, their feathers each a new blaze, fluttering and flapping wildly, maintaining the winds that hold his platform together in the endless nothingness that surrounds him.

Deep, deep into the heart of the Inferno, where the tongues glow blue-white, he thinks for a moment that he can see the calcified cracks of cooling embers through which the flames spill. Too quickly, it’s gone, the hundreds of wings covering it over in a blur of light and smoke and sparks.

Then, there is the Eye.

And then there are hundreds.

Vermillion against the titian haze, they all stare, oil-slick through waves of heat that drift around Caleb. He’s sweltering, the heavy coat stifling him worse than any jungle, but to remove it would leave him feeling exposed under the many watchful gazes, all of which are focused on him and him alone.

Uncannily, it almost feels like hands pressing themselves to his flesh and clothes, impish bodies of flame surrounding him, enfolding him, enveloping him utterly.

Who knew you could drown in fire?

 

_ Do you see, Little Warlock? _

_ Can you see it, my pet? _

 

Caleb wakes, sweating and shaking, sobbing. Throws himself into…Caduceus’s? arms. And that’s No-Veth’s hand rubbing his back, shushing him as she does, and Jester’s soft, trembling voice asking him if he is alright.

The Luxon’s last words linger.

 

_ Do not forget My Favour… _

 

“Ich-I-I am fine,” he manages to stutter, voice hoarse, still hiccoughing sobs. He clutches at something around his neck, something he didn’t even realize was there. Perhaps it hadn’t been, he cannot tell. Twelve smooth planes and their corresponding points pressing into the flesh of his palm. The pendant is uncomfortably warm in his hand, but he can’t stand to let go of it.

“You were screaming, Cay,” Veth’s eyes, when he gets the courage to look at her, are wet with unshed tears. “I don’t like this. I don’t like this at all.”

Caleb says nothing. The lingering metallic tint to the taste of the air frightens him out of it. For a minute, he thinks that maybe he bit his tongue, but already he knows better, knows that between the spaces of the world, other things lurk and shift, simultaneously as they exist within the bodies of beloved friends, walking the mortal plane.

Nauseous, stomach roiling, he lurches away from Caduceus. The others are awake now too, watching him. They are barely three days away from Asarius, and he can see how Yasha’s eyes flit to the subtle demarcation of the horizon, barely visible in the Xhorhaasian gloom. Fjord too, looks behind and not ahead. The rest only have eyes for him. It feels eerily similar to the eyes from his dream, still probing but less omnisciently invasive.

Beau’s eyes find his, and he’s suddenly overwhelmed, throwing himself to the ground, hands clawing the dirt as he dry heaves. There’s nothing in his stomach to expel; he hasn’t felt much like eating since he made the deal, since he pressed his lips to those that once belonged (still belong) to Molly and kissed the Luxon, sealing him into a binding pact.

“Caleb! Oh, Caleb, easy, easy.” Thankfully it’s only Veth who comes to his aide, the mother in her overpowering her fear. And guilt. So much guilt. He’s seen it rolling off of her in waves every time she’s near him, or looking at him. When he woke to her, after the vision, and had seen her real, true face, the evidence of the validity of the deal he’d made… It was worth it, worth it to him, even if Veth did not seem to agree. Her hands were shaking when she washed the blood sigil from his forehead, but she hadn’t said another word.

Now, however, Caleb is starting fear that he’s gotten in over his head. The visceral reaction he has to the dreams – and they aren’t the same as visions, they’re something different entirely, something in between the two, something more real than a dream, more present in the now than a vision – is only the beginning, if he’s guessed correctly. (He has. Caleb’s never been more certain of anything in his life.) He knows that it is true. Knows it like a rabbit knows not to trust a fox, like a mouse knows not to trust the falcon, no matter its sweet words and pleasant demeanor.

Just because the Luxon told him he wouldn’t take what wasn’t freely given, doesn’t mean he won’t anyways. Caleb knows that. Caleb knows that intimately well.

(Ikithon’s voice, his temptations, still ring in Caleb’s ears.)

_ You will be great, and powerful, my boy. And you will serve something greater than yourself. A higher purpose. You will show the filthy common people that they require someone to lead them. Someone to point them in the right direction. Someone like you, Bren. We are shepherds and they are sheep, and we are all that saves them from the wolves outside their door. You want to protect your parents, don’t you, Bren? _

Caleb hates him with a fervor. Yussa frightened him for much the same reasons. But this…this Luxon…the Luxon is a force beyond man’s machinations, and while he’s wary of It, of the promises that It made, for some reason, he trusts the race of men and mortals less. For as unknown as Its desires and motivations may be, at least he can trust that It is far larger than him. It has such great and unenviable power that It could likely flick a finger at Ikithon and wipe him from the face of the earth. If It wanted to hurt him, Caleb thinks, It already would have. At the most minor inconvenience, It could snuff out his life without a thought. This is not like Fjord’s patron, bound into another plane, contained there at a detriment to its power. This god-being walks the earth in a mortal form of Its own volition and now, in the aftermath of the half-dream, Caleb understands why.

The Luxon  _ is _ the firestorm. The hands, the eyes, the wings, were the Luxon, cradling Caleb intimately in Its elemental embrace.

To unleash Its full self upon the world would be the end of the world completely.

And to think that Molly’s body is a shell for but a fraction of that power. That Molly’s reanimated flesh is all that stands between the world and complete destruction.

_ I am Life. I am Entropy. _

Caleb shivers as he feels the shadow of doom fly overhead, sheltering them the nearer they draw to Ghor Dranas, an ever watchful presence. Against his chest, he can feel the beacon pendant warm. Whatever path it is that the Luxon has pushed him towards, It seems pleased.

Beauregard watches him all the time now.

The vision (and Caleb doesn’t like to think about it, not if he can help it) is something that they now share through an unspeakable bond. Something tells him that it was the same. That they both witnessed the same events, already put into motion, already moving with such exponential force of momentum that it cannot be countered. Cannot be stopped.

What Beau thinks of the vision, however, is something Caleb hasn’t been able to identify. She moves with urgency. She always has, but this is different. There is a tremor to her limbs that screams of a different sort of anxiety than that which plagues Caleb. What he feels, he has no immediate name for. What he feels more than anything else is his insignificance. More now than ever is that viscerally clear.

At night, beneath starless skies, Caleb wonders why the Luxon chose him.

He does not find answers.

Once, very, very early in the morning, when he is on watch, curled into Jannik’s side, Beauregard pads over to him silently and sits, her back pressed up against the moorbounder, and hugs her knees to her chest.

“Caleb?”

“Ja.”

“When he get where we’re going…what’s going to happen. I mean, we’re going to get Yeza, and get out, right? But…”

A long sigh escapes him. He is weary, he is tired to his bones. “I don’t know. I don’t what it wants from me. But I don’t think that it means for me to do anything here. I am not…sufficiently powerful enough yet, at least, I do not believe I am. Not for what it desires.”

“But you saw what happened-“

“Ja, I did. If we had the same vision, then ja, I saw what happened. But we will be long gone from Ghor Dranas by then.”

She shifts, resting her chin on her knee, staring out into the empty abyss that is the Xhorhaasian nightscape. “He’s coming here, isn’t He?”

Caleb offers only silence by way of answer. It’s true and they both know it. He doesn’t need to say anything for that to be the case.

“What do you think He wants?”

He shrugs. The lights above his head glow morosely as his mood.

“He’s going to burn the world, but why? What’s that even mean?” She’s starting to get worked up. He can tell.

“I do not know, Beauregard.”

“How’s He going to restore everything anyways?” The tone of her voice grows aggressive. “Like what’s—”

“I do not know, Beauregard,” Caleb says again, very pointedly avoiding her gaze.

“—the point in destroying everything if all it means is that it’s all going to come back again anyhow?”

“I do not  _ know _ , Beauregard!”

Immediately her questions cease at his snappish repetition.

“I do not know anything, except that It chose me, It offered me this path. The thought process behind such a being is beyond us. We are mere mortals. It stalks about this plane in Mollymauk’s body as though we are ants in a glass box filled with sand and It is our benevolent overlord. I do not know anything, save what It wishes for me to know.”

In the fait light, Caleb can see something click into place in Beau’s mind.

“Caleb. You call the…Luxon…you call the Luxon an ‘It’. Why?”

“Because It is not a person. It is a being of extreme power, older, I worry, than time itself, or at least time as we know it. An ancient primordial being made of raw, elemental energy. You would do better to compare It to a natural disaster than to a person.”

Quietly, she contemplates what he’s said, though process plain on her face. “That’s what you talk to in your dreams, isn’t it. Like, Fjord sees the eyes and shit, but you…”

“Saw what I just described,” he confirms. “Ja. And felt. It’s terrifying. And I have been very afraid, for much of my life. But this?” He laughs, brokenly. “This is something else entirely. This is something beyond our comprehension.”

Softly, almost unintelligibly soft, Beau asks the question Caleb fears more than any other.

“Can you handle It?”

Caleb says nothing, and Beau seems to understand, because she doesn’t press him any further.

_ Who could? _

* * *

The first time they are beset by Krynn warriors, they are not able to convince them that they are Xhorhaasian. A spell is flung at them fast, but Caleb is faster, counterspelling as quickly as he is able. Almost simultaneously, he feels something impossible welling up within him, feels that same searing light as it floods his veins, and flings a hand out at the Krynn mage. A magic he has never felt before, that comes from no incantation, that requires no components, leaves his fingertips, a surge of power that is not his own, but channeled through him, a vassal to the will of the Luxon.

What happens is so grotesquely horrendous, that it stops everyone, even the Kyrnn, dead in their tracks.

An arcane light, coloured a golden red that shoots from Caleb’s outstretched hand like tongues of liquid flame, connects with the side of the Krynn mage’s face, and it sloughs off into hunks of ash, like a disintegrate spell gone wrong.

Caleb can only stare wide eyed. The Krynn around him look on in shock and awe. His own party is stunned to inaction. The mage, howling in agony, puts a shaking hand to their face, or what remains. Even the helmet is mangled beyond recognition.

A language none of the Nein speaks falls from the Krynn commander’s lips, but they don’t need to know the words to hear their meaning.

As the mage crumples to their knees, the Commander’s scouting party rallies, their weapons put down. The commander approaches with their palms up, and then, slowly removes their helm. A Krynn woman, her skin a purple just to the side of deep, rich mahogany brown, with eyes like pure amethyst, steps tentatively forward, her subordinates unthreatening, but ready, behind her. The mage writhes on the ground in pain, their agonized moaning the backdrop of the sudden turn in events.

“Where did you learn to do that?” she asks in heavily accented Common. “Where did you learn  _ Entropiya _ ?”

Guided by instinct alone, uncertain still as to the outcome (for half the Krynn, it seems, worship Lolth, and the other half the Luxon), he removed the beacon pendant from where he hid it beneath his robes. “I-I serve the Luxon.”

Their knees hit the ground before he can finish the words, a buzzing whisper of the god-being’s name on their lips.

“We even have the Nonagon’s seal!” Jester says, pulling the letter that will free Yeza from her pack. “See? We’re like, really super cool!”

“You have seen Him?” the Krynn commander asks. “You have seen Lord Lucien?”

“He’s, uh, in Asarius.” Fjord clears his throat, trying and failing valiantly to avoid staring at the suffering mage. “We think he intends to head for Ghor Dranas, at least, it seemed that way when we left.”

The Commander nods. “This information is new to us. And a great boon. I am sorry we did not believe you. Please, will you allow our healer to treat—” 

Before she can finish asking, Caduceus has already knelt by their side, smoothing a hand over the ravaged remnants of their face, and removing the helm to reveal soft features in a bluish purple the colour of deep twilight and long silvery-grey hair. The mage breathes lightly, grievously wounded, but alive and conscious. Flesh has knitted back together, but it is mottled, incomplete.

“Thank you,” the mage says, but it is impossible to tell through the twisted mouth, if they speak with the same voice as they used to, it is deeper than Caleb anticipated, but lilting in a way that he finds far too familiar. Noticing the look of abject horror on Caduceus’s face at the half finished job, the mage lays a shaky hand on his. “Dunamancy is not so easily undone, cleric. I will live still to serve and that is enough.”

A strong will runs through the mage, who stands without aide and puts out a hand to Caleb. “You are a worthy tool of the Luxon. I am Illyias.”

“Caleb Widogast.”

When Caleb does not take a hand in return, Illyias nods simply, noting his nervous expression. “I bear you no ill will, Caleb Widogast. A man like me cannot afford to.”

“Do you wield similar magic?” The question is past Caleb’s lips before he has a change to reign himself in. He’s still shaking from the encounter, from the unexpected power.

“No, the Luxon has not blessed me with such as that. But they are of a similar nature.” He nods once more and steps back from them, giving way to the Commander who barks orders in their dialect before turning back to the Nein.

“We will be on our way, now. Thank you for healing our caster.”

“We didn’t get your name, Commander…” Beau asks. It’s a leading question, and though Caleb can tell, he doesn’t think that Beau’s overconfidence will get in their way, not when they have already convinced the Xhorhaasians of their trustworthiness. His gaze strays to Illyias, to the information he might have, the answers. Caleb can tell now that he has barely begun to tap his powers much less understand them, and having someone who could provide some manner in answer…

So caught up in his thoughts, Caleb misses the name of the Commander entirely and, before he can think of a question (and he has many, so, so many questions that run through his mind faster than he can speak them) they have already begun to move off in the opposite direction and the opportunity is lost.

His party turns on him, swarming, surrounding. The weight of their expectations lay heavy on his shoulders. Only Veth takes his hand, and doesn’t press with looks and stares.

“You don’t have to say anything, Caleb,” she says, loud enough for all of them to hear, but speaking obviously to him alone. “You don’t have to say anything until you’re ready.”

He’s not ready, so he doesn’t speak.

“We should prob’ly get a move on, then,” Fjord’s tone is carefully measured, but when he makes to go, Beau stands her ground.

“No. No, Caleb, you know what, this is serious. I’m not like…mad at you or anything. None of us…fuck. You got N-Veth her body back. That’s huge, Caleb. That’s incredible, but, fuck!” She puts her hand on his shoulders. “At what cost, Caleb? I asked if you could handle this. That power…that spell…fuck.” Like most things with Beau’s emotions, they enter her quickly, swell and then fade away just as fast. The cresting anger (not at him, at the helplessness she feels, he knows it, can see it plain on her face) dissipates and she lets her hands drop, releases him and the breath she was holding. “Caleb, you’ve barely ‘served’ the Luxon for a week, and you stopped a few Xhorhaasian soldiers dead in the tracks. Out of  _ fear _ . And they’re the people who  _ use _ this magic. On the regular.”

There’s a lull during which Caleb looks anywhere but at his party members. Two blue hands take his. Jester turns his hand over, rubbing her thumbs on his palm in concentric circles, over a faint, faint scar.

“Caleb, you made a pact with Fjord once,” she begins, and he can practically hear the snap of heads facing their way, and then to Fjord with equal fervor. “You know, under the water. A blood pact. That was like, kind of freaky and everything. Especially because Fjord was…well, you know…at the time. And we were all really worried about Fjord, but I was also really worried about you, because that was like, super really sketchy.”

Gently, she pulled his hand up between hers, clasping them before her. Reluctantly, he looks up. Her eyes are wide and wet.

“Caleb, of all the times I’ve been super worried, I’m really, extra worried about you now. Please let us help you  _ before _ anything becomes a problem.”

Pursing his lips tightly, Caleb swallows back the rising bile in his throat. Fire had destroyed so much that was dear to him. And this is a different power, but just as capable of destruction and he has no idea what to do with it. No real idea of what the Luxon even wants from him beyond the nebulous declaration that he should continue to ‘follow his path’. At least Fjord, for as untrustworthy as his patron is, had a clear goal. Not that Fjord would have agreed with him on that, but he doesn’t need to know that Caleb’s thought it. Caleb thinks many things that he has no intention of sharing, and many of them in that moment.

“That is just it, Jester. I don’t know. I don’t know any of this. How could I tell you anything when I don’t know anything anymore?”

_ Worship me _ .

A simple directive. A transaction. Veth’s life for his servitude. At the time…

Of all the calculated risks he’d ever taken, this one, was the one least thought through. A cornered animal, he’d done the only thing that made sense in the moment. Who was he to defy a god? Who was he to refuse worship to a being that could smite him from existence?

_ A coward. A sentimental coward, that is who. _

“We’ll be here for you, Mister Caleb.” Caduceus lays a large hand on his back, rubbing it gently. “Don’t you worry.”

But Caleb knows that what Caduceus think of when he hears the word ‘god’ and what Caleb thinks of, are two wildly different things. Caduceus was not there when a god propositioned him. Caduceus was not there when It advanced on him, held him still by Its sheer imposing presence and a mere thumb and forefinger. Caduceus was not there when Caleb threw caution to the wind and sealed the pact.

“I have brought this on myself. I appreciate your support, but this is not like our decision to simply leave Uk’atoa behind. This god walks the mortal plane and will not be so easily usurped. And I’m not entirely sure it is malicious. I do not think It particularly cares for human proclivities. But then, I do not think I could accurately ascertain what It wants even if It did. I do not think this is something that you can help. What is done is done.”

_ Please help me, _ he does not say.

There is no help for him that comes from mortal minds and mortal hands.

* * *

When he is alone, Caleb holds the beacon pendant in his hands, and stares into it curiously, before slipping, slipping in the grey expanse, the world fading away around him. At least this is familiar, at least this one thing remains. No light. Stars. The same strange formless shapes in purple and blue, the relics of time immemorial passing him by.  The void consumes him and by now, it is almost comforting. Even the speed that pushes him forward, or makes it feel like he is, does not make his heart race any longer. He concentrates, focuses on the mote of possibility, the hazy orb of light floating towards his chest and he stills and settles. The pulse syncs to his heart.

And then, suddenly, when he finally feels the rest of the world drift away, and the pulsing mote is so close he can feel it, comfortable and warm near his soul, full of potential, it stops short. Everything around him slows to such a creeping pace that it feels like time has been brought to a standstill. The easy familiarity shatters.

Hands slide from nowhere down over his shoulders and a low, hauntingly familiar, lilting voice whispers in his ear. “Caleb Widogast.”

The only thing that keeps him from getting up his hopes is the greeting he receives. This is not Mollymauk. Mollymauk would say  _ ‘Mister Caleb’ _ , and the tone of his voice would be playful, gently teasing.

This is  _ not _ Mollymauk.

“Lord Luxon.”

The hands slide down his shoulders.

“You have been here many times, Little Warlock,” The Luxon says, Its tone carrying the same impassive remoteness as usual. “There are shadows of your presence everywhere in my domain.”

Caleb files that tidbit away for later. “Why are doing this?”

Its hands leave him, but he does not turn to face it. Does not want to bear the burden of what he would see there. Is not sure what it might even be.

The choice is taken from him, regardless, as the Luxon steps into view.

“I have visited you before and you did not ask Me such questions then.”

“You did not look and sound like Mollymauk Tealeaf then.”

The likeness is perfect, save for the pale silver eye on his forehead, but the voice is not, and the illusion is almost broken. Almost, but not quite. It has managed to replicate Molly, down to the impossibly garish coat, to each unique adornment, even to the dimples in his cheeks.

But when It speaks with Molly’s voice, there is no feeling, only emptiness, and Caleb feels the inescapable urge to weep. Power is not the antithesis of inanition after all, and Molly deserves better than the hollowness that is total dominion without emotion. Molly deserves better than for his body to be puppeteered around by something that cares so little for the world around It.

“Does it bother you, My little Warlock? I thought you found our last meeting uncomfortable. This is familiar to you. Does it not please you?” Glowing red eyes watch him keenly, waiting, head tilted.

Alien.

“If by our last ‘meeting’, you mean that…dream…”

“My preferred form is overwhelming to you, even in visions. I thought you would prefer something you could perceive without difficulty. This mortal body you so enjoy fulfills those necessities.” It quirks a brow, the most expression Caleb has seen on Its face…ever. “You are strange, my little Wizard, to want so much and deny yourself everything.”

Caleb waits, breath baited, for It to change, to burst into a blooming inferno, to rage around him, but the odd muffled still of the extraplanar space, the anti-luminous world that houses the little lights that quicken his fingers, and lighten his step, and sharpen his eyes when the moment most desperately calls for it, remains unchanged. He and the Luxon stand together in the unending void, waiting each other out.

Somehow, Caleb doubts he has more patience than an ever dying and reborn god of light and entropy.

Swallowing, he forces himself to speak. “Why have you come? Why here? What do you want from me?”

For some reason, Caleb expects that the hard light in the Luxon’s eyes will soften, and that Its expression will gentle, and It will outstretch a hand to his head, pet at his hair.

It does not.

Neither does It take him by the chin and force their gazes to meet.

“You have questions. That is why I am here. What good would it be to have you in My service, if you do not understand the power you have been granted?”

For a being of living flame, the Luxon is far more logical than Caleb anticipated.

“We are here, Caleb Widogast, because this is My realm. You have been here many, many times. Look.” He points out into the endless expanse, where clouds of colour have paused in their floating travels, stopped, and Caleb can just barely make out the shape that it forms…

“Is that me?” he asks, all fear forgotten, but his discomfort made twofold. He watches the shadow image of a pulsing mote disappear within his shadow self and then, the shadow siphons slowly backwards until it fades and recedes from sight. “I don’t understand.”

“I see many things, Caleb Widogast, but not all.” The Luxon repeats. “But all things are possible, and possibility is something that rebirth facilitates.”

In the emptiness, Caleb feels that Its voice should reverberate, but instead, the space is impossibly quiet, the words swallowed by the strange muting energy that finds a home within the void.

“All of these are your shadows, and the shadows of others who have and will have passed through this space. Time is mutable, My little Warlock. Is that not what you want to hear? I have already given you the first taste of this power. Did it suit you?”

If it were possible to be cold in a place where physical sensation is moot, Caleb would shiver.

“I hurt one of your followers,” he says carefully, mindful of the god’s proximity to him.

“That is irrelevant.”

He doesn’t like it. Doesn’t like how It doesn’t even attempt to pretend. Despite Its desire to make him comfortable, It doesn’t seem to understand that this, this is so much worse. Infinitely worse. Caleb would prefer the all consuming flame to the thin façade.

“Tell me, Caleb Widogast, if My power will be put to use through you.”

Markedly, Caleb recognizes that as a demand, and bends without question, even though he feels faint and his heart is rabbiting in his chest. “It will be put to use, My Lord. But I still do not know what You want of me.”

“I already told you to follow your path to completion, did I not?”

Ikithon flashes before his eyes, and for a moment his pulse calms and a cool hatred settles in his veins. “Ja, You did say that.”

“Then trust in Me. You do worship to Me through this.”

A strange distortion fluxuates the Luxon’s words. Lightheaded, Caleb blinks rapidly. Phantom hands trace down his shoulder blades and plunge icy cold through his back into his lungs. Breaths come hard but slow. His pulse grows sluggish and his vision is dotted with black spots. He’s careening, knees buckling, but the Luxon only looks on, immovable in Its otherness. Then, when Caleb thinks, irrational from his oxygen starved brain, that after all of this, the Luxon is simply going to let him die in an extraplanar vacuum, a real, tangible hand presses against Caleb’s sternum and the tug that he felt at his flesh, like it was slipping away from him, or he away from it, lessens and he is brought back, gasping, from the edge.

“We will not meet here again,” It decrees as the blood flow returns to Caleb’s extremities. He doesn’t bother asking what happened. It doesn’t matter, because he doubts the Luxon will tell him. It’s definition of clarity more closely resembles Caleb’s definition of cryptic than anything else.

“Wait, bitte. Before…before You leave, please tell me, what did the vision mean?”

The Luxon considers Caleb carefully. It is then that he realizes It has not blinked once in all the time they have stood there. Without care It presses a talon into Its thumb, and Caleb knows what is coming next. Tensing, he takes a step back, but it does him no good; he is no farther from the god than when he began.

“Do not fret, Caleb Widogast. Have I ever harmed you?”

The pause he takes to consider it is enough and the thumb finds his forehead, and the eye is painted there for all to see. Simultaneously, his surroundings speed up, the mote enters him and he is pushed backwards, out of the Beacon and thrust unceremoniously back into his body.

The mortal realm hits him like a gut punch, the wind knocked from him completely and he drops the tiny beacon. With a small thump it hits his chest and hangs limp. Glancing around, the world seems unchanged, but Caleb feels different. Altered. Unsteady. Tentatively, he puts a hand to his forehead.

It comes away red.

A whisper of words echo in his ears once more. The same as before:

_ Do not forget My Favour… _

Caleb only wishes he knew what it means. 


	5. 5. From the Ashes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There is no beginning or end. There is only the cycle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note any changes to tags and warnings. 
> 
> Written to: Black Hill & Silent Island - Tales of the night forest, the full album  
> and Rising from the Ashes by Immediate Music
> 
> I misunderstood some stuff because I used to listen to CR at work and have back edited it out that Ghor Dranas was the city destroyed. It is now an 'unnamed city' near Ghor Dranas.

5\. From the Ashes

The ground is cold and wet. He lays face first, naked in the mud; grime is caked on his cheek and plastered in his hair. He tastes dirt in his mouth. He shivers, strains, weakly moves. The ground squelches beneath his weight, mud finding its way between every crack and crevice, in between every flap and fold of skin, beneath his nails. Gingerly, he hoists himself up onto his forearms, and then rolls, only to slip in the mud and fall backwards. Disgustingly, his head sinks back into the muck.

Above him, the sky is grey; half rain, half snow, the drizzle patters on the barren wasteland. The clouds are think, leaving no window for the sun, its natural luminosity filtered to an intensity that leaves his eyes straining and his head aching. Even though he closes his eyes, it doesn’t help. The snow continues to fall, small flakes gathering on him now in cool clumps.

Finally, tired of lying there, still and helpless in the damp and cold, he pushes himself to sitting and examines the horizon. Directly before him, he sees nothing, but as he surveys the rest of his surroundings, his circumstances are thrown into sharp relief.

He would say it looks like a warzone – he’s heard that phrase used before – but this is far beyond that. Charred and crumbling, the remnants of a once immense city are smoldering behind him, the wreckage so complete that he wouldn’t know it had ever been a city to look at it, save for the still teetering remnants of a great tall tower. Smoke billows from the skeleton structures, the mangled body of civilization, withered and burned. Only now does he realize that it isn’t snow that collects on him, mixed with the rain; it is ash.

Mouth agape, covered in mud and cinders, hair a knotted, sopping tangle, Mollymauk Tealeaf struggles to his feet as he takes in what might as well be evidence of the end of the world.

When he finally finds his shaky footing, cold mud soft between his toes, he simply stares for a few moments, unsure what to do. It is only then that the memories come rushing back.

Beau, screaming his name.

Lorenzo’s mocking laugh.

The wicked drag of the glaive as it shattered his sternum and carved through the tender flesh beneath before pushing out his back and into the ground. The familiar metallic taste of blood on his tongue. The gut punch of agony as Lorenzo twisted the blade within him. The feel of his rib cage as it snapped and the warmth of his blood as it seeped out of his body, pooling around him. The soft _thunk_ of his head as it hit the ground. The whisper of his last breath escaping his lungs as he died.

All memories Molly feels he could do without.

He looks down to his mud caked chest and slides his finger through the grime. There he uncovers it, faintly silver on his lilac skin, a starburst scar, large and jagged, bisecting his chest. Suddenly feeling ill, Molly’s knees buckle, sinking him to the ground. He retches. With trembling hands, he claws at the mud, feels it slick beneath his talons, but holds himself firm.

A far more pressing thought finally enters his mind, now that he is empty of everything else.

He doesn’t know where he is.

He doesn’t know how he got there.

He doesn’t know who resurrected him, or how long ago that may have been.

How much time is he missing? How did he come to wake naked in a barren wasteland on the outskirts of a city in ruins, the sky weeping ash and rain?

Once more, Molly heaves, but this time nothing comes up except bile, which burns his throat. He sits back on his heels, kneeling in the sludge and looks up at the sky, waiting. For what, he doesn’t know. The light drizzle of rain runs soothingly across his face, clearing tracks of lavender flesh from behind the murky brown and grey coating.

He waits for what feels like forever.

When nothing happens, Molly stands, more steadily than before, and starts towards the remnants of the city. It’s that or either wander the empty wastes in the mist. Neither option is particularly appealing, but he doesn’t have much choice.

The rain starts to come down harder as he walks. While it cleanses him of the mud and ash, it leaves him trembling with cold, his hair falling in stringy dripping strands over his forehead and tangled around his horns. The going is rougher the closer he draws to the city’s wreckage. Moldering ruins of toppled and partially or mostly burned buildings litter the ground and he has to pick his path carefully. The ground too is slippery and he falls more than once, cutting open his hands when he tries to catch himself on a toppled section of wall, its jagged stone surface uncaring of the tender flesh of his palms.

Molly adds blood to the list of substances that are not clothes in which he is presently covered, as there is nothing he can do except hold his hands palm up to the rain and hope that the worst of it washes away. The wounds sting, but he continues on, if a bit more cautiously than before.

He’s not even halfway to the remnants of the tower when he gives up, falling against a large fascia stone from some destroyed monument or structure. Subconsciously, his tail twines around his own legs, the only semblance of comfort he can provide himself in the desolate landscape. It’s meagre at best, and the hopelessness weighs him down.

Why did he wake at all only to find himself alone in the wastes, left to die, cold and wounded and suffering?

Where are his friends? Where are the Nein?

Where is Yasha?

(Did she even survive?)

However long he sits, he does not know. The light quality does not alter, all through the day, that is, if time is passing at all. Molly can’t tell. For all he knows, he might not even be on the material plane anymore.

Eventually, fitfully, he falls asleep.

_A high pitched whining keens._

_Bursts of a violent red light._

_Heat._

_Searing heat._

_Immeasurable, insurmountable, unending heat._

_A sound, ragged and agonized._

_A scream._

_His own._

_The light is growing, growing, the pressure mounts and he—_

The sharp crackle of thunder and its accompanying lightning strike jar him awake. On the horizon, through the intermittent flashes of lightning, Molly sees a dark silhouette advancing. Too tired and weak to care, he stays where he is, splayed on the stone like a sacrificial offering. If the shadow means death, he welcomes it.

Shallow breaths rattle in his lungs and he shivers with a bone deep chill. All the while, the shadow grows nearer. Molly waits, forsaken, forlorn.

Molly waits to die again.

Molly waits to die alone.

Alone and empty.

He doesn’t even cry.

Softly, he lets his eyes flutter shut. Even through his eyelids, the shock of lightning illuminates the shadow as it comes to loom over him.

He’s ready.

Ready for the end.

Twice dead, both times awakened alone within the mud… his cyclical existence is agony. Why continue on if only to lose everything he gains?

And now, life will reject him once more.

His thin chest barely moves, so shallow are his breaths.

 _Let it be quick_ , he prays silently. _Let it be like falling asleep this time. Please, Moonweaver, please…_

The shadow of an arm lifts; he doesn’t brace himself for the blow, only waits.

_Please, please, please…_

But it never comes. Instead, a hand falls on his cheek tenderly.

“Mollymauk…”

In shock, his eyes fly open.

For the first time since he woke, Molly allows himself to cry. He is not alone. He is not forsaken.

Above him, stands Yasha.

* * *

Softly glowing holy light heals the worst of his wounds, fills him with an unnatural warmth to combat the bone deep chill. Yasha’s face, though drawn in the haze of lightning and mist, is effervescent. When she picks him up in her strong arms, Molly is still crying, overwhelmed with relief. He cries until he can’t anymore, and then he sleeps.

All the while, Yasha whispers to him, soft, lulling words that sing in celestial. A few times, he wakes, and she is still carrying him, tirelessly walking. Eventually, the landscape changes a bit. No dreams plague his sleep. Only the bliss of endlessness keeps him company through the sporadic periods of unconsciousness. Eventually, when he wakes, he remains awake, feeling much refreshed. It is then that Molly speaks for the first time since he found himself in the wastes. The first word is, of course, Yasha’s name.

It comes out much more clearly than he anticipated.

“Yasha…they saved you…”

“Oh! Molly. You are awake.” She stops, looks around for a moment and then sits down on a smooth, felled log, all the bark stripped away; though her pack slips from her shoulders to the ground, she keeps Molly carefully in her lap. Something warm is covering him, and he realizes then that it is her dark blue shawl.

Her hair tickles at his ear.

There are many things – so many things – he wants to say. But it doesn’t seem like the right moment for any of them.

Shifting a bit, Yasha cradles him more closely in her arms, pressing kiss after kiss to the crown of his head, despite the remaining grime. The dampness of her tears plasters a few wispy hairs to his skin. She does not care that he is dirty. She only cares that he is alive. He can feel that it’s true in the tenderness of her lips at his hairline.

“I was afraid!” she whispers urgently. “I was so afraid, oh Molly! Oh I was so, so afraid!”

Though his heart aches to respond, he says nothing, only clinging to her with a strength he didn’t know he had.

“But the storm led me to you." She smiles through her tears. "Gods, I was afraid, Molly. I was afraid,” Yasha says again, “that he would never let you go.”

Her ominous words choke his thoughts with an unknown, yet somehow familiar terror. All-encompassing, his throat closes, his chest seizes, his heart dislodged, blocking his breath. The air won’t come; he can’t breathe, but then Yasha’s eyes meet his own and the creeping edge of darkness recedes from his vision.

“Molly?” Yasha asks frantically. “Molly?”

“I’m okay,” he says. It’s only half a lie; he is always okay in her embrace, even when he’s not. “Yasha,” her name is an intangible comfort, a soothing balm on his soul. “What happened? What happened to me?

A dark look crosses her face, and she opens her mouth to speak, but stops, considering her words.

“I know I died. Lorenzo killed me. I remember that.” It’s best to put it out there. He can tell she doesn’t want to say it. “But after that…nothing. I don’t even – where are we?”

The dark look only grows darker.

“Xhorhaas. We are in Xhorhaas.”

Sufficiently stunned by her revelation, Molly remains silent. It takes some time before Yasha continues, enough time for Molly to note the new scars on her face, and a few new beads in her hair. Lines and creases born of sorrow and pain surround her mouth.

“You did die. Beau and Nott and Caleb buried you.” Her voice wobbles through the sentence. “We had no way of bringing you back. I was angry for a long, long time, Molly. I was so angry…I do not remember anything for weeks after,” she admits, shame colouring her tone. “We did a lot of things after that. A lot of…a lot of running away from what happened. A lot of running away from you.

“How we ended up in Xhorhaas is a long story.” She sighs and looks into the distance. Molly brings a hand to her face.

“Yasha, please. Please tell me.” It takes very little on his part to convince her. At this moment, Molly is almost certain he could ask her to do anything and, without hesitating, she would, simply because he had asked.

“I do not know exactly what happened to you, Molly, but I will tell you what I can.”

And tell him she does, of a city of beasts called Asarius, of the job they’d completed there, of the favour they curried. And then, how they watched from behind a curtain as a ghost walked among them, calling itself Lord Nonagon, people flinging themselves to the floor before him in worship.

She tells him of the terrible yearning in her heart, how the others held her back.

How the Nonagon had seen them, and beckoned them forth.

“You do not understand what it was like, Molly,” she says when he expresses his outrage. “I thought…I thought I would never see you again…”

Gone are the slow tears. Yasha openly weeps above him, her strong hands trembling and gentle, where they long to squeeze him tight. She is right. He does not understand.

He is afraid to.

“Lucien? It was Lucien?”

A sharp shake of Yasha’s head tells him no.

“It wanted to speak to us. Caleb says…Caleb says that it is an It and not a He.”

Worry infuses Molly’s confusion now more so than before. “Wait, what do you—”

Quickly, Yasha cuts him off. “It asked me lots of questions. About you. It wanted to know everything. And It knew things about me. Things that only you know. It knew about Zuala. And then, it wanted to talk to Caleb.” For a moment, Yasha fidgets, as if she’d hiding something from him and Molly almost calls her on it. He wants to know and he doesn’t. He’s too tired to press her harder, and so waits to see what she will do.

Her eyes are luminous in the ever-dusk.

“After It talked to Caleb, we left. But we…made a few trades, I guess? Do you remember the dodecahedron…the beacon?”

He nods, waiting anxious.

“It’s…it’s a holy relic, of this…this god. Called the Luxon. Many people in the north of Xhorhaas worship It.”

“And the Nonagon wanted it?”

Yasha nods.

“Why?” The nervous look on her face does him no favours.

“Oh, Molly…”

“Yasha, what does this have to do with how I – how I ended up…what does this have to do with how you found me?”

When he catches her gaze, he finally understands. It’s pity. Pity for him. Her words don’t come and the pity wells up and overflows and Yasha cries once more. Molly can’t stand it, can’t stand that his closest, dearest friend, his life’s companion, is weeping because of him.

“You don’t have to! I’m sorry, I’m sorry, Yasha, please, please don’t cry, Yasha—”

“A god, Molly. It wasn’t Lucien in your body. The Nonagon is a title, I think, but it wasn’t him. It was a god. It was the Luxon. It told me that your body belongs to It. That It _made you_. The Eyes…the red Eyes…Molly, I—” She can’t even finish speaking, pressing her forehead to his, hiding her expression from him in the process.

It doesn’t matter.

Molly isn’t paying attention to her expression anymore.

 _It made you_ . _Your body belongs to It._

For once, it is Molly who wants to rage.

“No! No! This is _my_ body!” he decrees, furious. His cheeks and eyes grow warm. “I made it mine, Yasha! I made it mine, oh gods, oh fucking gods, fuck…” He clings to her shoulders as she rocks him, and they drown themselves in one another’s sorrow and fear and rage at the unfairness of the world.

* * *

“I’m sorry about your coat, Molly,” Yasha says. He’s dressed in one of her spare tunics, with a pair of her leggings held up by a length of rope about his waist. They’d torn another tunic into strips to make him some foot coverings. As much as Yasha may want to carry him the whole way out of Xhorhaas, they both know that it’s better if he walks. The ensemble hangs large and baggy on his frame, but it’s better than going naked in the damp spring weather.

For what feels like the millionth time since he woke, Molly tries not to cry. “It’s just a coat, Yasha. It was only ever a coat.”

A few days have passed since they last spoke about the events that led up to his return, and Molly has pieced together a few things. For one, it seems that many months have passed since that night on the Glory Run Road. Maybe even close to a full year, or longer. He has Yasha cut his hair – much of the growth, he didn’t remember accumulating, and if it isn’t his, he doesn’t want it. Eventually, he assumes that it was Lucien’s tomb takers who resurrected him. He can recall nothing of it, though, and is caught between anxious curiosity and a desire to never, ever know the truth. Among other things, Yasha avoids talking about Caleb and Nott.

The worry itches like a scab that won’t heal over right, and Molly can’t stop mentally picking it.

_What if they died? What if they died and she doesn’t want to tell me? What if they left? What if—_

On and on the thoughts wrap. In an ironic way, it makes a nice change from overthinking the circumstances of his return.

It’s the first day he’d walked most of the time on his own. Before, Yasha carried him. After a few hours plodding along by himself, he had always ended up collapsing, though neither of them can ascertain why. It’s not resurrection sickness, but a pervasive ragged feeling, like something scraped against his insides haphazardly and removed something.

(The box in Molly’s head with Yasha’s words from their last conversation about It is locked up tightly in a shadowed corner.)

He’s gone twice as long as ever when Yasha, without turning to look at him, starts to speak.

“I tried to bargain for you, Molly. But It refused. There was nothing I could say to convince It. I tried so hard…I’m sorry, Molly. And I wasn’t there when you…when you…Molly, I failed you. I’ve failed you so much. I’m so sorry…Can you ever forgive me?”

“Oh, Yasha, there was never anything to forgive, dear.” He tucks himself into her side and they walk like that for a while longer, just being near to one another. All the while Molly works up the courage to ask one of the questions that’s been brewing in him for so long. “Where was I, specifically. What…that was a city once, wasn’t it? It looked like…it looked recent.”

Absently, Yasha rubs an earlobe, her long standing nervous tick, closely followed by the loose-strand-of-hair tucking. “It was a city not far from Ghor Dranas.”

While not the capital of the Krynn dynasty itself, not the largest city in all of Xhorhaas, covered in permanent night, it is close enough. The stronghold of eastern Wynandir could have shook from the explosion. Molly pales.

“We were near there only a few months ago. Molly?”

“Yes?”

“Molly, I think you…” Her voice wavers, and she looks cautiously at him from the corner of her eye. “I think _It_ destroyed that city.”

He expected it. It’s not surprising in the least, but hearing it said aloud, not knowing exactly what happened, though not how… is a lot.

They don’t talk for the rest of the day.

That night, when they lay curled into one another, and Molly feels truly safe and secure for the first time since Yasha and the others were taken by the slavers, completely enveloped as he is by her embrace. He recalls many nights spent in such a manner, especially in the early days of the carnival, when they were both still fragile. Fisting his hands in her tunic, he presses his head up under her chin, nuzzling in.

“Do you…can you forgive me, please?” Yasha breaks their long silence. “I know you said that I didn’t need to ask, but I—”

“Of course. Of course, Yasha. You’re forgiven. Always. I love you.”

And he does love her. Loving Yasha is easier than anything else in the world. It’s the guaranteed reciprocation of feelings, of unconditional care and genuine tenderness. It’s companionship and comfort and understanding. Yasha is all of that and more, the words for which, Molly doesn’t have the ability to describe.

“You are my soul’s mate, Molly. I love you too.”

Yet, for all his outer self feels safe, his inner self is in turmoil, a strange sort of calm, where, just beneath it, his nerves buzz so frantically that it’s almost as if they are still and he is floating in a sort of suspended animation.

“Yasha,” he says before his brain can catch up with him. “Why don’t you talk about Caleb and Nott anymore?”

In his grip, Yasha stiffens. “Molly…”

“Please, Yasha?”

She can never say no to his pleas. She never could and he knows it.

_Yash, ‘m scared._

_It’s okay, Molly. I’ve got you._

_C’n I sleep with you tonight?_

_Of course, Molly. It will be okay. I promise._

“It’s a long story, Molly. And I don’t… I don’t know if I’m, uh…if I’m the best person to…”

“Just please tell me that they’re alive. They’re not dead, are they? Or…they didn’t _leave_ us, please tell me they didn’t leave! Please, Yasha, I need to know. I need to know!”

He needs this. He needs this and he needs her to know it, but he also wants her to deny him, because he can’t stand not to ask, but nor does he think he can handle knowing if the worst is true.

“They are not dead, Molly. They did not leave us. They are fine…were fine…when I left them. And Jester would have messaged me if anything went wrong.”

Slowly, with stilting words, Yasha tells him Nott’s story. Molly thinks back to every discussion he had with Nott, reevaluating everything she ever said about pasts, and knowing who you were, and the time she turned on them and called Caleb her boy, and finds himself regretting some of the things he said, the way he treated her on occasion. The things he laughed at… logically, he knows that he couldn’t have known. That she never told anyone. It explains so much about why Yasha hadn’t wanted to say anything yet, but she still avoids talking about Caleb altogether.

When he opens his mouth, she gives him a look and Molly decides to let sleeping bears lie.

It doesn’t stop him from thinking about it, however.

Nothing could stop him from thinking about Caleb.

If anything could, it would have to be some kind of miracle, because, now that he’s safe, and not worried about dying of starvation, or exposure, Caleb is his every other thought.

* * *

Over the several weeks that it takes for them to walk to the border (avoiding patrols with a strange ease Molly doesn’t care to consider) he hears many tales of the Mighty Nein, and all they’ve been up to in his absence. He learns about the member they picked up along the way, the friends (and enemies) they’ve made, the pets that survived their trips. Anything and everything that Yasha’s been present for, she shares.

She was right. It’s a lot. He’s missed so much and part of him begins to wonder if he’ll ever fit in with them again. If it will ever feel like it used to. He’d already started to learn the answer to that after the carnival fell apart, and knows now, without having to give the thought voice, that everything has been irrevocably changed, for him, for the others.

Nothing will ever be the same again.

They have grown and changed and become more than what they were and they did that without him.

And he never even had the opportunity.

None of this, does he tell Yasha.

Not his fears about fitting in, or his fears about Caleb hating him for some reason, or his fears about the fact that a god lived for months in the body he now wears and did things with it that might come back to haunt him (like destroying an entire city, for example, and all the other things that happened that he never wants to know about), or the fear that the god might come back at any moment and usurp his claim on the body.

He doesn’t say anything to her, because she’s been smiling more, not to mention how radically her need for physical touch has grown. They cuddle at night, and in the morning when he wakes, Yasha is still clinging to him, when normally she would have rolled away, complaining about his extreme body temperature. She always has a hand on him in some way, fixing his hair, even an arm thrown about his shoulders, hugging him into her side as they walk. Maybe it’s not the most efficient, but Molly will never begrudge her that nearness. As it is, he needs it just as much as she.

They enter into Nicodranas, having heard nothing from Jester about a change in their whereabouts. Yasha had explained that Jester told her where they were headed and informed her that they would message her should that change, so the blue tiefling’s home is their destination.

Before they arrive, Yasha cuts his hair twice more, and he has to readjust her braids to account for the added length. They met a caravan not long after entering the Menagerie Coast, and to his delight, Molly is able to get some clothes that fit him, and a pair of nice boots, though they’re not by any stretch of the imagination close to what he lost to the Luxon’s habitation.

So, when the gates of Nicodranas rise up before them, Molly feels, at least a little, like he’s gained back some semblance of himself, no matter the lack of ostentatious coat and shining, jingling jewelry. Ever the carnie, he knows that putting on a show is the only thing that keeps his façade in place, and with the Nein drawing so near, he can’t afford to lose that. He can’t afford to do without.

They can’t see him for what he really is, what he has become.

He won’t let them.

Somehow, with Yasha’s coaching, they manage to con their way into the city. Something about being performers sent for by the Ruby of the Sea. According to Yasha, Jester’s mother really is everything Jester ever boasted and more. She’s regal and elegant, kind and caring, and in her own way, a powerful figure in the city.

Molly’s only happy to hear that Jester’s mother really loves her. He couldn’t bear it if she didn’t.

For all Zadash had opened his eyes to the wideness of the world, it is with Nicodranas that Molly truly falls in love, especially after their long walk through the barren landscape of Xhorhaas. Its environment seems less artificial; the trees grow in natural clumps here and there, instead of in neat, orderly rows. The scents are exotic and alluring, the sounds lively and sprinkled with the hundreds of different languages and accents that find their dalliance while in port. It’s a city that lives on the temporary and Molly finds that he appreciates it more than he expected. Additionally, it’s warm and full of intriguing plant life. Colourful flowers peek like spritely faces out from leafy manes of hair, and vines twine around posts, cling the buildings, curl up and overhead on awnings of brightly dyed fabric. This is a living city, worthy of the person Molly used to be.

The person he wants to be again.

“That’s it, there,” Yasha says, pointing. The Lavish Chateau isn’t the largest building in the area, but it’s not small by any means and he imagines Jester as a child, running up and down the whole of it, wreaking havoc with a delighted toddler’s cackle.

He can’t help himself. Molly grins from ear to ear.

“That looks like the perfect place to make some mischief. No wonder Jester ended up the way she did.”

Yasha shrugs. “It does seem to suit her.”

When they finally stand at the door, Molly is torn two ways, nerves pulling in one direction, and overwhelming excitement in the other. Both emotions are so large that he feels full to overflowing, feels like he’s drowning in all the possibilities… being rejected, being forgotten. Logically, he knows that Yasha has done little but tell him how much he has been missed but they don’t _know_ he’s coming. They don’t _know_ that he’s back again. Maybe, while she was gone, while she wasn’t there to remind them about him (because it’s Yasha he’s sure who’s kept his memory from falling out of their consciousness. She’s the only one with a real reason to do so, after all), they decided he didn’t matter, that he’d been gone longer than he was ever with them in the first place, that it wasn’t worth crying over anymore, that a god wore his body now, and he was just a lost cause, something they couldn’t hope ever to bring back.

“Molly?” Yasha asks, and only then does he realize that the weight of his fears has stopped him in his tracks, stock still, silent tears beading at his eyelashes. Strong arms encircle him. “Oh, oh Molly, it’s going to be okay.”

Once he’s composed, they enter together, though he still hesitates when crossing the threshold. Timidly, he hunches next to her, and it’s so opposed to his usual flashy self, that he almost turns around and walks back out, but then, the largest (read only to his knowledge, at least) minotaur he’s ever seen.

“Oh.” He grunts. “You’re back. You brought company.”

“Hello, Blude. Is Jester here?”

He knocks his head back, horn just hitting the wall behind him. “Upstairs. With the Ruby. Go on.”

Molly hides himself behind her blessed height as they tromp up the stairs. On the landing is a younger human, arms crossed, but when he sees Yasha he steps aside. “Miss Jester and your friends are in with the Ruby.”

For a moment, Molly thinks he can sneak through, but the man stops him short, an arm out between them. Yasha actually growls.

“He’s family,” she says, and the young man, throw the hand up in the air.

“Fine, fine, gods…”

The continue down the hall, dark for lack of light to brighten the chestnut stained floors and wall panels. From around a corner, behind a door, Molly can hear the muffled strains of Jester’s excitable voice, and low, indistinguishable rumblings of someone else speaking.

A woman nearly stops them, but, when she sees Yasha, runs back over and gets the door for them. With bated breath, Molly waits. Because Yasha’s form takes up nearly the entire doorway, Molly only hears the excited calls of her name, from Beau and Nott (and especially Jester), Fjord’s unique accent and two softer voices, both of which rumble incoherently. One of them is Caleb (one of them _must_ be Caleb) and the other the new member of their motley little group, Caduceus something or another.

Suddenly, Molly is ripped from his thoughts, because Yasha is standing aside and they’re all there, each and every one of the Mighty Nein (he’s left assuming that the short halfling woman with nut brown skin and hair is Nott/Veth), and they’re all looking at him. Though the expressions they wear are different, they’re all silent, frozen as they look at him in unadulterated shock.

“Mollymauk?”

Before he can even register what’s happening, Beau has flung herself around him, face stuck in his neck, voice low in his ear demanding that he ‘better never fucking do that again, or I’ll fucking punch you, you dumb, selfless bastard—”

When he realizes that she’s crying, reality hits and he hugs her back, tight, nosing at the fuzz of her undercut gently.

“It’s good to see you too Beau,” he whispers. She’s telling him the truth, she’s sharing her feelings, and those feeling are about him.

“I love you, you damn idiot.”

When she pulls away, no one can tell she’s been crying, save Molly, whose shirt is wet. Just for good measure, she slugs him one in the shoulder, but there’s no heat behind it. Her eyes are dark and brooding, and there’s the slightest tremble to her lip as she moves aside to let others in.

But Molly’s still stuck on the three little words he thought she’d find impossible to say to anyone, much less himself.

He catches her gaze once more and nods, almost imperceptibly. _I love you, too._ He knows she understands.

Each in turn, they have their moment with him, Jester lifting him and swirling him like the end of a romance novel, Fjord clasping his forearm before pulling him in to a tight embrace. Veth shyly comes to stand beside him before hugging him around the legs, her face pressed into the meat of his thigh. She looks up at him from below.

“We need to feed you! Rail thin! Worse than Caleb!”

It’s suddenly impossible to figure how none of them ever realized she was a mother.

A large ambling person smiles lackadaisically down over him, while Nott is wrapped around his legs, and Molly imagines looking at this scene from an outsider's perspective and can’t help but bark a laugh.

“My gods you’re tall.”  

“No, I’m Caduceus. Caduceus Clay. Nice to meet you officially.”

Molly finds a grin begin to widen itself across his features. “You’ve been taking care of them for me?”

“Absolutely. They certainly need it.”

The moment that Caduceus is standing next to Fjord, Jester drags another beautiful tiefling up to him, undoubtedly the famed Ruby of the Sea, her mother, who introduces herself to him demurely. It’s all very nice and Molly’s chest is warm and comfortable, save the tiny space in the corner that trembles because the entire time since Beau hugged him, Caleb has not looked back at him once.

Caleb has not even moved.

Caleb _hates_ him, and Molly knows it. He just doesn’t understand why.

But the Nein crowd around him, pull him off in another direction and, though Molly watches him as he goes, Caleb never looks back.

His heart sinks.

* * *

Evening arrives. Even with the once again familiar weight of Yasha's arms around him, Molly can't stop thinking about Caleb. How he looked in the Ruby's chambers, how he curled in on himself, his face pale and drawn.

As stealthily as he is able, Molly crawls out from Yahsa's embrace and makes for the door, walking along the edge of the room to get there. He doesn't want to wake her; he just needs to get out. He just needs to breathe fresh air and feel alive. Needs to forget about everything, including Caleb, if only for one night.

Fate, it seems, has other plans, for the moment he steps out into the hall, another pair of eyes locks onto his.

It is unmistakably Caleb.

“Mollymauk…” he breathes the name lighter than a leaf, falling from the sky.

“Caleb…”

Heart in his throat, Molly takes a step forward, and then another and another until they are face to face.

“What are you doing up?”

“Couldn't sleep,” he says. It's true. Mostly, at least.

“I could not, either.” Caleb looks around, uncomfortably. “Should we, ah…”

“Go out on the balcony?” Molly quickly jumps on the opportunity before Caleb can say anything further. “We never got to say hello earlier and I…” Caleb stares off to the side, fidgeting with his coat. “Caleb?” What harm can it do to reach out a hand to him? The automatic flinch away says too much. “Hey, Caleb, look at me? Please?”

But Caleb does not. The frequency of his breaths speeds up and Molly tries not to let the fisted clench of distress around his guts disway him.

“Caleb…” His name is a prayer on Molly's lips. “Caleb what's wrong? Why won’t you look at me? Have I…Is it something I did? Said?” Once more, he reaches out, places a hand delicately over Caleb’s thin wrist, which he notices, for the first time, is not wrapped as he remembered it. “Please, Caleb, I can’t—”

The moment that his fingers make contact, Caleb jerks away from him. “Don’t touch me. Do not touch me. You don’t know what I’ve done. And when you do, then you will regret having touched me. You will not want me looking at you, or being anywhere near you. I am trying to do you a favour, Mister Mollymauk, please let me.”

Bewildered, Molly can’t help but stare, truly looking at Caleb for the first time since they reunited; he’s still thin and pale, but the bridge of his nose is dusted in freckles. The bags under his eyes are more pronounced than ever and he wears a resigned expression, as though an executioner has just signed his death warrant.

“I thought you hated me.” Little more than a whisper, Molly’s voice still carries in the enclosed space of the hallway.

Caleb’s piercing eyes find him then, shocked out of his resolution not to stain Molly with his glance. “No. No, a thousand times over, no. I do not hate you, but I believe you will hate me.”

The words quiver between them like a startled and cornered deer, ready to dash away. With gentleness in his movements and tenderness in his voice, Molly gestures down the hall. “The balcony, Caleb. We can talk on the balcony.”

As Caleb shakes his head, the tousle of his red hair brushes over his features, hiding them from view, and Molly feels more distance between them than ever before.

Outside, the night is warm. Humid wafts of air push across Molly’s face and he closes his eyes for a moment, reveling in it, pretending, if only for a moment, that nothing happened. That this is their first time visiting Jester’s mother and that he was always there with them and he’s about to have a nice conversation with the object of his affections. That maybe, just maybe, this night might end in a revelation, in a kiss.

When he comes back to himself, sees Caleb’s face illuminated by the moons, lined and serious, his fantasy crumbles. Molly sits down next to Caleb, and waits, quietly, passively for his heart to be broken.

“I…” Whatever Caleb was going to say is lost. Molly watches as he hangs his head, hands in his lap, while Caleb starts again. “I have things which I must confess to you. I do not-“

“Caleb, it’s alright. Just, you don’t have to say anything, Caleb, I forgive you, alright? Whatever it is that’s got you so worked up, I forgive you for it. I just got back, I want—”

“No!” Caleb shoots upward, and away, leaning over the edge of the balcony. “Do not forgive what you do not know! Do not be so quick to underestimate the disgusting things of which I am capable.”

Molly is just as quick to stand. “Caleb, I just want to be h—”

“You will listen to what I have to say, and then you will leave me here, alone. Just because you do not want to hear what I have to say does not mean that I do not need to tell you. Verstehst?”

Chastened, and summarily trepidatious, Molly sits back down.

“I am sure,” the words fall bitterly from Caleb’s lips, “that when I am finished, you will find what I have done to be wholly unforgivable, and this is why I must tell you, so that you understand why I cannot be near you. Why we cannot be friends.”

If Caleb had taken his hand, sunk it into Molly’s chest and ripped his heart out, it would have been less painful. “We’re not friends?”

That, Caleb ignores. “When we were in Asarius, the Luxon wanted to speak with me, so I went. It wanted to know about you. It knew many things, but it didn’t know about you.”

Not so long ago, Yasha was saying similar things, and Molly’s insides begin to churn with nerves of an entirely different sort. He’s not sure what things he expected Caleb to say, but this is not one of them.

“It knew about me,” Caleb continues, “I do not know why — no,” he stops himself. “That is a lie. I know why It did what It did.” As he whirls on Molly with an intensity he did not anticipate, Caleb suddenly drops back to the bench and only now does he fully level his gaze on Molly. “I am selfish, Mister Mollymauk. I am selfish and I do not want to tell you all of these things, but I must.” Entreatingly, Caleb puts out a hand before pulling it away, as if only just realizing what he was about to do. Molly’s skin tingles where his hand would have laid.

Though he wants to speak, Molly holds his tongue.

“It offered to sleep with me.”

A thousand thoughts race through Molly’s head. The many times he wondered if there would ever be opportunity, if Caleb would ever be interested, willing…A sudden spike of jealousy flares within him. How dare—

“But I refused It.”

The words are enough to stop the thoughts dead altogether, and confusion resumes.

“Please,” Caleb says, likely having noticed the change in Molly’s posture. “Let me finish. I refused It, and It did not press me further. I could not help myself for looking, though, and for that I apologize.”

Blinking, as if that might make Caleb’s words make more sense, Molly’s brows draw inward. “Wait, you mean that It got naked? You’ve see plenty of me before that in the bathhouse. It’s not a big deal,” he says, waving it off with his hand.

“But it is, Mister Mollymauk, because it was not you who invited that stare. It was impolite and unseemly.”

“Caleb,” Molly swallows hard on the words he’s about to say. How steadfastly he’s ignored them all this long while. Of course, he would only come to terms with it now, when Caleb’s…when _Caleb_ himself is at stake. “It wasn’t me in there. It wasn’t…” his voice grows soft. He still doesn’t want to admit it, but it’s the truth and if it means making Caleb feel better, then it’s worth it. It would be worth it a hundred times over, just to keep that self-deprecating tone from Caleb’s lips. “It wasn’t my body, Caleb. Not at the time.”

“But it _is_ , Mollymauk. It _is_ your body. And you were not able to consent. And for that I apologize.”

“You don’t—”

“Let me finish,” Caleb snaps and Molly slams his mouth shut so hard his teeth click. “What did…what did Yasha tell you about the deal that we made for Veth?”

Uncharacteristically, his voice is so soft, that he almost can’t hear himself. “You traded the dodecahedron.”

“For her husband. We traded the dodecahedron for the safety of her husband.” Molly’s mental math doesn’t add up, and that’s when the confusion must show on his face because Caleb quickly shakes his head. “Please, please let me finish. I went back. To the Luxon. I did… _offer_ , but It refused me, for which I am grateful.”

“Offer…” Molly can see where this is going. Caleb looks wretched, and all he can think to do is take his hand. When he tries, Caleb pulls away, his mouth twitching up into a little, loathing smile.

“I, ah, showed It ‘the goods’.” Caleb says, not meeting Molly's eyes. “It was the only thing I could think of that I knew It wanted, besides the Dodecahedron, and we’d already bargained that away. Veth wanted her husband safe more than she wanted to be herself again. And I wanted that for her. I could not let it pass us by. I saw an opportunity and I took it. I am disgusting.”

“You’re not.” Molly doesn’t let him pull away this time, taking his Caleb’s face in his hands. His heart hurts for Caleb, its beats pounding out Caleb’s name. “You’re not. Did you ever think a god would just give up the body it chose for itself?” _The one it made_. “Fuck – Caleb I don’t even know how I’m back. For all I know, It’s just biding Its time, waiting inside me right now. And you’re worried because you flashed a god! That bathhouse thing goes two ways, Caleb. I’ve seen just as much of you as you have of me.”

“But the intent!” Caleb’s voice rises several levels, and only Molly’s hands on his face keep him from standing. “The intent was there, and regardless of what I thought, I hated myself for even trying it.”

“Well, I don’t hate you,” Molly caps the discussion defiantly. “I don’t hate you and I never will. Nothing happened, Caleb. If anything, I’m more angry that you put yourself in that position. You don’t…I don’t want you to have to bargain sex for favours! How would Veth have felt, knowing that you tried that? Caleb, you clearly didn’t want—”

“It doesn’t matter what I did or didn’t want! It matters what happened.”

Drawing Caleb close, Molly leans his forehead against Caleb’s. “It does matter, Caleb. It matters to me. And in the end, nothing happened, Caleb. Nothing happened. You don’t need to be forgiven, because I’m not upset about it. I’m not. I’m just angry that that _thing_ distressed you, Caleb. I want you to feel safe. I want you to be okay.” It dawns on him, suddenly, why Caleb might not want to be near him, and, disregarding the fact that the human seems to have forgotten it for the moment, pulls away. “Gods, I’m sorry. It’s— you don’t want to be near me because of _It_. Oh, gods, Caleb I’m sorry.”

“No, please don’t apologize. You don’t understand,” this time it’s Caleb chasing Molly, reaching out, and pulling back last minute. “I still made a deal for Veth to be herself again.”

“And I’m glad of that. I’m glad that she gets to be herself, but at what cost to you, Caleb?” Molly holds back tears. “You burden yourself for others so easily, how could you ever see yourself as selfish? How could I? You’ve the most selfless heart I know. But me? I’m the one who is selfish.”

But Caleb only shakes his head. “Now we are both liars.”

Tension is thick between them, though the palpability of it may just be the humidity in the air. With aching tenderness, Molly bridges the gap once more, decisively taking Caleb’s hand in his.

“Then we’re liars together.”

Caleb’s focus is on their joined hands, and Molly glances down too, looking at the contrast of his lavender flesh tones against Caleb’s cream, a pleasant palette.

“I have not finished telling you. Do you not wish to know what deal I made in the end? Why I do not believe you will want to be near me?”

There’s a plea hidden there, a call that says, “ _don’t ask me, spare yourself, spare me, spare us,”_ and as much as Molly wants to listen, as much as, once, the person he was would have, he takes the plunge. “No, I don't, but you need to tell me. I can see it on your face, Caleb.”

The plunge is as cold as ice.

“The hands you are holding serve the Luxon. The hands you are holding have worked wonders and terrors in Its name. I swore myself to worship It. I am the servant of the thing that stole you from your body. I am the servant of the creature that thinks of you as an inconsequential nuisance. It has offered me great powers, powers that…align with my interests. And I agreed. It could tell me now, right here, to do some magic that would remove you, and allow It to return, and I do not know what I would do if It did. I have made a pact, and beyond that, I stole something else from you that was not mine to take.” With serious eyes, dark for all their crystalline beauty, Caleb looks Molly dead on, his features solemn. “I sealed the pact with a kiss.”

A kiss.

It isn’t difficult for Molly to imagine that. For the moment, he uses it to block out everything else, – he’ll unpack that later – especially the growing unease settling in his stomach at the idea of Caleb worshipping the thing that… Forcibly, he pushes it down, pushes away the feeling of betrayal by imagining the tingle of Caleb’s beard on his chin, and the wizard’s chapped lips on his own, his tongue pressing at the seam of Caleb’s mouth…It’s a favoured fantasy, one he’s daydreamed about many a time Caleb was explaining something or another that Molly didn’t terribly care to understand when there was something so much more interesting to look at…like the way Caleb’s mouth moved around his strange Zemnian vowels…

“What was it like?”

Taken aback, Caleb physically startles away. “ ‘schuldigung? Was? Ehhh, what?”

“What was it like," Molly asks again, openly, frankly. "Kissing a god?”

“That—” Caleb stops, still clearly confused. “That is besides the point, Mollymauk, I have told you all of these things, but I do not think you understand the severity of the—”

“Caleb, I am grateful that you’re telling me. That you felt like you had to say everything, that even if I didn't want to, you knew I need to hear it. I am telling you now that I understand. I understand what you are saying.” He chooses his words carefully. “That you looked your fill at the Luxon’s body, that you nearly slept with the Luxon, that you kissed the Luxon, that you made a pact with the Luxon. And I am telling you, that it wasn’t me. I wasn’t there. These?” He gestures the conglomeration of old and new scars across his chest and on his hands and fingers. “These aren’t mine. I don’t know where they came from. Maybe they’re the Luxon’s, maybe they’re Lucien’s, but they’re not mine,” he announces it adamantly, as much for himself as for Caleb. Then, with a breath, he doubles back. “I asked you, please, to tell me what it was like to kiss a god, and I’d really like an answer.”

“But it _was you_ . It _was you.”_

“No, Caleb, it wasn’t,” he says once more, firmly. “I get that it maybe felt that way, but it wasn’t me. I wasn’t there, these things weren’t happening to me. Now, please, Caleb, answer my question.”

Caleb eyes him warily for a moment, before giving in. “It burned. Physically. It exuded immense amounts of heat, more so than a tiefling would normally, I assure you. It felt like molten lava was being poured down my throat.”

Molly squeezes his eyes shut at the description, but settles and pulls Caleb’s hands up between them, running his thumbs over the stark white knuckles. Silence falls heavily around them.

“Kiss me now, Caleb. Let me show you that it wasn’t me. Let me show you that we’re different, the Luxon and I. That you didn’t do anything wrong by me, no matter what you think. And if that’s not enough, then I’ll absolve you of whatever you feel you’ve done. If nothing I say can change your mind, can make you feel differently, then let me do this much. Please.”

When Caleb says nothing, Molly chances a glance at his face. He’s blinking rapidly, clearly overwhelmed with shock at the suggestion.

“Caleb…if you don’t want to, then please don’t feel like you ha—”

“I do want to.” Caleb’s voice breaks as he says it. “I have always wanted to. I chose to seal the pact that way. That was me. I did not have to do that, it was not required of me. But I did. I did and I thought of you when I did it.”

Another confession.

(The worst is still knowing that Caleb serves the thing that Molly is most afraid of, the thing that displaced him, the thing that wields this body like a weapon, and oh, the things he will have to do to make it his again, because right now, _he_ is the interloper, not the Luxon, not Lucien. His skin still feels foreign, no matter how many gaudily embroidered shirts he can find to drape casually over his shoulders. But there’s so much to be thinking about, and right now, it’s Caleb Molly wants to consider, and nothing else. Right now, it’s time for his own confession. He pushes the rest aside again. _Later, later._ )

“You’ve been my every other thought since Yasha found me, Caleb. If things had been different…” _But they aren’t_. “If things had been different, I don’t know where it would have taken us, but I have long been wondering what it would be like to kiss you. This isn’t the circumstances I’d imagined…or wanted, I confess, but it is the circumstance that I’m choosing. You can say no, you can say yes, whichever you’re comfortable with, but know that I very much want to kiss you right now, Mister Caleb. And I always do.”

The world holds its breath with Molly, waiting as Caleb’s face undergoes a plethora of emotions. It goes on so long that he’s almost certain Caleb will decline. And then, the softest whisper, like moth wings against his cheek, sunders the night.

“Then kiss me, Mister Tealeaf.”

Caleb’s leaning forward into Molly’s space and Molly doesn’t hesitate when he sees how dark Caleb’s eyes are. His fingers sink into the mess of Caleb hair, drawing him nearer and their lips press together. This isn’t a transfer of power, a pact sealed, a deal made, this is an expression of passion, of emotion and desire. Of deep care. They move together, Molly deepening the kiss, as they surge up to one another, as Caleb’s hands slide of their own will over Molly’s shoulder, pulling him in nearer.

There will be repercussions, of course, from this. Molly knows it’s true. He knows that one, passionate kiss cannot fix everything in an instant, cannot wipe away Caleb’s self-hatred, or lessen Molly’s fears, or erase the chaos that the Luxon caused. But, better even than Yasha’s embrace for its ability to comfort, is Caleb, near him, sharing his very lifebreath, pressing into his mouth with abandon as Molly gives back with equal ardor, and Molly decides not to worry. Not to taint this kiss - his first kiss with Caleb, Caleb’s first kiss with him – with dark thoughts.

It’s a beautiful thing like butterfly wings, but just as delicate.

When they break apart, breathing heavily, his hand falling away from the soft fuzz of Caleb’s cheek, Molly takes in Caleb’s expression, torn somewhere between skittishness and weak smiles.

“Now you’ve kissed me,” he says and hopes against hope that it will be enough.

“Now I have kissed you.” Caleb’s forehead knocks against his own, and slides his hands down Molly’s arms to tangle their fingers together.

For a time, they stay like that, simply being, and then, Caleb pulls away to look him in the eye. “There are things still, that you will not want to face, but will have to eventually.”

“I know.” So many, many things that have been piling up a long time. Things, Molly suspects, that Caleb’s personal knowledge of the Luxon will no doubt add to.

The grip Caleb has on Molly’s hands is tight, but comforting. “I will be beside you when you do. We all will, but I promise, I will also be,” he declared, with no small means of gravitas. “No matter what It orders me to do.”

Whatever is behind that, whatever nebulous ‘what if’s’ have come to pass in Caleb’s service under the Luxon, Molly decides they will keep. There will be time. There _will_ be. He heaves a sigh – he’s tired, so, so tired – and lets rest his head on Caleb’s shoulder. “Thank you, Caleb. Thank you.”

Just for that now, it can be enough.

* * *

That night, Mollymauk dreams.

Caleb’s arms fall away from him. The world falls away from him. Everything is disseminated into the ether. The only light is the glow from Molly’s eyes.

Red light.

Red like blood.

Moonlight breaks through the clouds, shining down on him from above, revealing the skeleton branches of trees, spindle fingers that reach and claw at him. Molly lifts his hands to hide his face from their gnarled grasp. His talons are torn ragged, covered in dirt and dried blood, hands littered with scratches, but clear of ink; his tattoos are gone. There is only the Eye, staring defiantly back at him.

The cold earth beneath him, the scent of mildew and rotting vegetation crumbles away into the void, and he falls, falls, falls—

_“LUCIEN!”_

—hits the ground.

There’s blood in his throat, the barest glimpses of light and a shadowed face beneath a hood, the cry of someone familiar, their velvet dark form dashing towards him from his peripherals. The grey light whisks it all away, the vision disintegrating around him as quickly as it had been born.

_“Lord Lucien!”_

The world reforms anew, the mists of memory and time coalescing into a new form, swirling picturesque smoke that settles into a sparkling onyx floor and intricately carved pillars. The light in the temple is red from the stained glass windows that dot either side of the hall.

_“Lord Lucien!”_

Molly looks down at himself, dressed in dark leather breeches, and a heavy black robe, richly embroidered in gold thread, open in the front to bare his chest, and the Eye over his heart. The scars there are less numerous than he remembers.

 _“Where are you going, my Lord?”_ the Drow asks. “ _The Prelate is looking for you.”_

Molly raises the hand bearing the eye. “The Prelate can wait, Xelcsior. I have business.” The words fall from his lips with deadly calm, but his mind is screaming, terrified and confused. Contradictorily, his heart keeps a steady even tempo.

_“But Lord Lucien—”_

His hand grips into a fist, his own talons digging into his hand. The Eye bursts red and the attaché before him cries out, hands flying to blackened eyes.

“Tell the Prelate that if he wishes to speak with me, he will have to do so on my time. I am the Prelate now, Xelcsior. Tell Demorath _that_ in your report.”

_Screamingscreamingscreaming_

_Letmeoutletmeoutletmeoutletmeoutletmeout—_

The whisper of metal sliding from within leather catches his ear and he turns to see the red robed battle clerics, scimitars in hand, watching him. There is Cree; she catches his eye, gives the slightest of nods and turns on her compatriots, a flurry of bright steel, sanguine light and liquid threads of blood as she pulls life force from those around her, from those who would challenge her chosen Lord.

The attaché backs away, still reeling from blindness, as Molly advances on him. “You thought that you could stop me?” He laughs coldly. “You’re all blind, blind even when I haven’t used my gifts on you. There is more than this. There is _more_ . We can _do_ more and _be_ more. Demorath is old and weak and we will all _rot_ under his leadership. Let me show you, Xelcsior. Let me lead you to the truth.”

The battle clerics, surprised and stunned, drop one by one as Cree and the others loyal to him cut them down. Xelcsior cowers in his shadow.

_“B-but Lord Luci—”_

“You will call me by my title!”

_“L-lord Nonagon, please, I don’t understand, why are you doing this?”_

Even amidst the wailing and groans of the felled clerics, the heavy swish of Molly’s robes is loud in the echoing chamber. He steps through the pooling blood. It seeps into the soles of his leather boots and the hem of his robes, but he doesn’t care. “Will you come with me, Xelcsior, or will you wilt here like the pathetic thing you are and perish with the rest of them?”

But Xelcsior never answers. On the stair, the Prelate, in all his aging glory, silver hair flowing to the floor, holds out a hand threateningly in his direction. _“Nonagon, you are out of line! You may be—”_

“I am the chosen of the Firebird and I have been shown the path to the city and it does not lay here with you.”

From his sides, Molly pulls his own scimitars, a familiar dual weight in each hand, and slices through the fragile skin over his chest, one by one, slowly achingly, as he advances towards the steps, the Prelate striding forwards to meet him. A rope of blood coils out whip fast through the air and Molly ducks—

Black engulfs the scene, eats away like a disease at the Prelate’s face, at the slaughtered clerics, at Cree and Xelscior, the ringing clang of swords meeting is—

—crickets chirping. Molly’s head is cushioned by a little bit of moss. He can smell it, fresh and earthy. The stars open up before them. Though night falls unending in Ghor Dranas, those steady pinpricks still shine through, and he takes comfort in seeing them, thought the comfort is not his alone. A soft paw rests on his hand, and they exchange a glance, gold to red.

“Cree?” He shivers; there’s a weight to the word that he can’t place, as though something important will follow.

_“Yes?”_

“I think I was made to live forever.”

_Letmeoutletmeoutletmeoutletmeout—_

Her voice is even and kind, reassuring, matronly. _“You will reincarnate with the rest of us in the Luxon’s glory.”_

“No. Something more. Something bigger. I can feel it, Cree. Just like I feel what I am. I’m going to burn through life like the eternal flame of the Luxon burns through the darkness. We are what we are: creatures made for living, dying, languishing, reincarnating, living, dying, forever and on until the last of the universe is ash again and the gods crumble beyond the reaches of memory. But not me. I will go on forever. And I think it will be lonely.”

 _“Lucien.”_ She shifts, placing a hand over his forearm. _“I will be with you. I will beg the Luxon that in every life, You are my beloved child. Endlessness may be your destiny, but I believe it can be different. You are more than that.”_

Molly fixes her in his sights. “Am I?”

_“Consecution may lay in your future, but you are different. Some part of you may never be wiped away by time, but I believe that others will always find you special. You are marked, Lucien, and even when you are reborn someone else, that will never cease to be. You will not be lonely, my heart. All will witness you and be devoted to you. All will see you and know that you are worthy. The Firebird would not let its chosen champion languish elsewise.”_

This time, when Molly looks at the sky and sees the moon, instead of falling, he is drawn—

—up, up, up.

It’s not a moon above him at all. It is a pulsating, twelve-sided light. A mote. It hums his name. It hums many names, all at once rising and falling with intensity until it’s so loud his ears bleed.

 _Mollymauk_ _Lucien_ _Morscen_ _Bel’idair_ _Zytran_ _Kelnar_ _Beon_ _Lysander_ _Diaval_ _Azeran_ _Helet_ _Ryaim_ _Mephalis_ _Trence_ _Nonagon_ _Nonagon_ **_NONAGON_ **

His mouth is open in a silent scream and then, as it draws nearer, moving impossibly fast and impossibly slow, vibrating and still all at once, it flares and he’s blinded. Its cold heat falls on his face. Tears roll down his cheeks as it touches his forehead, searing a brand of its presence there. The pressure as it enters his skull, settling behind his eyes, is incredible; he may still be screaming, but if he is, he doesn’t know it, can’t tell, blinded and deafened by the presence.

 _Mine,_ it whispers, insidious behind his eyes, wrapping possessively around the base of his skull. _Mine. Nonagon._

All that is within Molly is a whimper.

_Please no. Please leave. Please, please, pleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleaseplease—_

In tandem, the heat and pressure intensify until it bursts from him, from his mouth, from his eyes, living flame coiling, twining, reaching out, growing rapidly, surrounding, destroying, devouring—

A sonic boom accompanies the explosion that forces its way out of his body and just for a moment, Molly sees Ghor Dranas in all its former glory before it is engulfed in flames and turned to charred ruins; the impression of a phoenix made of glowing embers hangs in the air for half a moment and then falls into ash over the remnants of the Krynn capital, and the body that he inhabits drops to the ground, empty.

Gasping he wakes, covered in cold sweat, beading droplets over his skin, Caleb watching him, wide eyed with fear.

“What did you see?” he asks. “What did It show you?”

A hungering light, similar but not quite the same as fear, glints in his eyes, and Molly understands, finally, how Caleb fell to the lure of power. Molly understands the rush of it, remembering how it felt as it flowed into him, through him, out of him in starburst white light and all consuming flame. Understands what he couldn’t before.

A conduit has been opened, and it hasn’t been shut. He’s not even sure it’s possible.

Control has been swept away from him, leaving him floundering. Waking up to terrible truths, to repressed memories, Lucien’s rise and fall, his own abandonment in Xhorhaas, everything he’d ever run from his whole life. And the Luxon’s servant, there before him, still holding him tenderly in his arms.

“The truth. It showed me the truth.”

He feels the Luxon’s touch like a brand searing hot on his forehead and lifts a hand to it, nervously, feels it pulse, and knows, somehow, exactly what he would see there if he were to look in a mirror. It’s real. All of it is real, and he can’t pretend anymore. He never could.

Finally, feeling the impossible weight of it all settle on his shoulders, Molly falls into Caleb's arms, and cries.

“I never wanted this.” Caleb's breath is warm on his cheek. “I never wanted this.”

“I know.”

Cree's words to Lucien ( _to him_ ) ring mockingly in his ears, the vision of Ghor Dranas’ destruction emblazoned in his mind. “I don't want to be special. I don't want any of this.”

“But you are special to me.” Caleb says, a hand in his hair, petting rhythmically. “Not because of _what_ you are. Because of _who_ you are. You are Mollymauk Tealeaf and I will not let anyone take than from you, if I am able.”

Molly's mind settles into track, a looping repeat of everything he never wanted to think on ever again, rotating maddeningly in his head. Yet, despite the lips pressing against his temple with aching tenderness, and all of Caleb's attentions, for the first time in his exceedingly short life, Molly is more afraid of the future than the past.

It's not creeping up on him anymore; now it's in the open, ready to strike him down as surely as Lorenzo's glaive. And all Mollymauk can do is wait for the blow to inevitably fall.

 

_If he from heaven that filched that living fire_

_Condemned by Jove to endless torment be,_

_I greatly marvel how you still go free,_

_That far beyond Prometheus did aspire._

_The fire he stole, although of heavenly kind,_

_Which from above he craftily did take,_

_Of liveless clods, us living men to make,_

_He did bestow in temper of the mind._

_But you broke into heaven’s immortal store,_

_Where virtue, honor, wit, and beauty lay;_

_Which taking thence you have escaped away,_

_Yet stand as free as ere you did before;_

_Yet old Prometheus punished for his rape._

_Thus poor thieves suffer when the greater ‘scape._

 

~ _Idea 14: If he from heaven that filched that living fire_ by Michael Drayton

 

_Know though that my appearance here_

_In the shadow of golden fruit_

_Shall not be in vain. My gift,_

_This flaming feather, will remind you_

_You have held what you shall miss:_

_It will slay falsehoods and mists,_

_Will free you from the grip of those_

_Whose trickery does not live_

_Unless you take it to be true._

 

_Ever since I held you in my arms_

_(a flaming presence as I knew afterward)_

_What is unclear and ill-intended,_

_The murky force that thrives on refuse_

_Has been dispelled. All now in place,_

_Pale in pure light, each rising to its_

_Full height and worth. All I_

_Have done has flourished into fame_

 

~ From _Gift of the Firebird_ and _Addressed to the Firebird_ by Arthur Gregor

 


	6. 6. The Second Face

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I said it was over. I wrote this already months ago and never figured I'd post it. I guess I lied. I found it in my folder this morning, and then I was talking to some people about this story and decided to add it because why the hell not?
> 
> Unbeta'd

With a sharp gasp, Molly shoots up from the bed. The sheets are sweat drenched, sticking to him uncomfortably and he peels the fabric away before darting bolting from the bed, stomach queasy. As he falls to his knees on the cool wood floorboard, Molly ducks his head low, the weight uncomfortable on his shoulders when he notices the glow on the floor. He leans heavily forward, supporting himself on clammy palms as he tries to breathe through the anxiety. Slowly, his rapid heart beat returns to a reasonable rate. Behind him, Molly can still hear Caleb’s gentle sleeping form, blissfully undisturbed by his own restlessness.

As soon as he feels like he’s no longer going to retch – he’s felt that way far too often lately – Molly stands up on shaky feet. In the far corner of the room there is a mirror; small, at least compared to that which adorns the Ruby’s wall, it’s frame is still a beautiful golden gilt. The glass is imperfect, wavering and distorted in places, but it does the job. Though his hair hangs over his forehead, the pure white light that radiates from the silvery scarred eye on his forehead shines through, unmistakable.

Permanent.

He swallows hard, forcing himself to look at it, to take in the ethereal light glimmering and glinting off the mirror.

It’s the first time he’s looked at it properly, and Molly notices that it changes the colour of his eyes, lightening them just enough for it to be noticeable. Lifting a slender hand to the glass, touching his reflection, Molly wets his lips. “What do you want from me?” he whispers. “Why linger if you don’t need me? Why can’t I just live my life? Didn’t you do everything you needed to?”

His reflection stares back at him, and nothing changes. “Fuck you.” The bitter declaration is impossibly quiet. “Fuck you. Just let me be. Let me  _ fucking _ be.”

For a long time, there is only Molly, his reflection, and the eye, staring back at him unblinkingly bright with its eerie light.

And then it flares, sears so hot it’s cold and his hands shoot out, slamming down hard to the wall on either side of the mirror, and he  _ feels _ it respond.

It speaks not with a voice so much as with an emotion that flares and flickers unbridled. The hair and the back of his neck tingles.

The sensation of a word blossoms in his mind.

_ Born. _

And again.

_ Consecuted _ .

Soft, like the barest hint of a breeze.

_ Decagon. _

“The must be how Fjord feels.” Molly shakes his head and, unthinkingly, pushing his hair back between his horns, exposing the eye completely. The resulting flare is far brighter than the rest.

_ Made by me. _

_ Made  _ for _ me. _

“I don’t want this.” He says forcefully, as though it will make a difference.

_ Born for this _ .

“No, not me. Maybe your Lucien, sure, but  _ not _ me.” Molly forms a fist, ignores the sting of a sliver in his hand as it rubs on the paneling. “Whoever he was, we’re not the same. I am my own person, not him.”

_ Your body _ .

The implication is obvious.

“Well that sucks for you because whatever you want, I’m gonna just do the opposite, alright? You made me? Fine. I’m going to be such a pain that you’ll want to just go make someone else then!”

_ You are special _ .

“Fuck that. Fuck you-“

“Molly?”

Caleb’s voice breaks the connection and the light fades away.

_ Good riddance, _ Molly thinks.

“Molly are you alright?”

Caleb is struck silver and shadow in the moons’ beams, his bronze hair a shining gunmetal grey. As he makes to stand, the sheets rustle and Molly has to close his eyes, the scene is so beautiful. What terrible things he has undergone to find one bastion of bliss in the darkness. It is almost surreal. Deliberately, he tosses his head as he turns the rest of the way, hiding the eye from view of Caleb, and Caleb from Its view.

Worry creases Caleb’s features and Molly laughs a little.

“As alright as I can be, I suppose.”

Coming the stand between Caleb’s legs where they hang over the edge of the bed, Molly lays a hand on his cheek.

“Yasha said that you were all in Ghor Dranas, but she didn’t tell me much about what happened there.”

Caleb quirks an eyebrow and his lips twitch, but he leans into Molly’s touch all the same. “I do not suppose she thought you would care to hear much about the place which Lucien perhaps called home.”

_ Fair enough _ . He only shrugs. “I’m asking now, though, if you don’t mind telling me.”

The soft thump of Caleb’s hand, rhythmic on the mattress beside him draws Molly’s attention and he sits, leaning comfortably into Caleb’s side.

“After we gave It the Beacon, we received a document with Lucien’s personal seal and were sent with direction on our way. Lady Zethris remained behind, with the Luxon, who seemed in no mood to leave. There had been talk of using a transportation circle, but that was apparently not something which could be done save with the permissions of the Lady herself, who was quite, er, occupied. We arrived mostly in one piece in Ghor Dranas and made our way to Rosohna, to the…” There’s a moment of hesitation. “Lucid Bastion. The seat of the Kyrnn Dynasty.”

Molly manages to stifle his reaction to the name. “And?”

“We met Leylas Krynn. She was as they say, I suppose. Bright. When she read the document we produced, we were hailed as heroes. It was the strangest thing I have ever experienced. Veth’s husband was brought to us without delay, and we were entreated to relay the story. We did, and then we remained there for a while before heading on again.”

“They sure like ‘L’ names in the Krynn dynasty, don’t they?” He asks, trying to draw the seriousness from Caleb’s face, but the frown lines only deepen.

“It was a beautiful place to behold, Molly. Columns of black marble, and a grey veined stone the likes of which I have not seen before. Intricate sconces and hanging light sources – for as much as they are rumoured to exist in the dark, the Krynn it seems, far prefer the light.”

“Like me?” Molly asks impulsively. Instantly, Caleb draws back.

“What do you mean?”

“They prefer me, because of Lucien. Lucien, avatar of the Light, or whatever, right?”

“I suppose.” Caleb nervously scratches at his arm. “When she read his name aloud, she certainly looked…emotional. I do not know how to describe it, exactly, and we did not press, but he was obviously a member of her court at the very least, and, I would guess, an important religious figure.”

Thinking back on the conversation (if it could be called that) that he’d had earlier, Molly doesn’t imagine that Caleb is too far off.

“I see,” he says, but nothing more, reaching instead for one of Caleb’s hands, holding in closely between his own. “Thank you for telling me.”

“Bitte.”

A long silence endures until the night has deepened to a point where even the Nicodranas wind has cooled, leaving Molly with goosebumps in stark contrast to the way he’d felt upon waking.

“Will you sleep again tonight?” Caleb asks, his eyes glinting like silver gems.

“We’ll see, I guess.”

Together, they curl up on the bed, Caleb pulling up a light blanket from the foot of the mattress in lieu of the mussed sheets. Caleb’s arms come around him from behind. Some combination of the warm breath on his cheek, the gentle – and still tentative – embrace, and the tickle of a stray lock of hair brings a smile to his face as Molly settles into the pillow.

“Schlaf gut, Liebling,” Caleb murmurers, voice laced with low, crackling magic, and all Molly can think to be is grateful as he slides into blissful arcane unconsciousness.

It is the hallway again. The same one as he has failed to describe to anyone, for then they would know he has seen it. The dark pillars glitter with veins of silvery light, and the red glass windows are not bracketed by a slew of battle clerics. In fact, this time, the space is empty save for himself.

He looks down and finds himself similarly adorned, though the embroidery on this robe is in silver and not gold. Of their own accord, his feet propel him forward towards the spiraling stair. No prelate appears from behind the wall, scowling angrily. In the grand antechamber, his booted footsteps echo loud.

At the top, the room opens up wide; here, the windows are not tinted, but frosted instead, creating the illusion of openness, while illuminating the space more readily. There are two doorways at the end of the hall, and Molly follows his feet to the one on the left, whereupon the door opens to another stair. When he reaches it’s highest point, an intricately carved corridor yawns before him, like some unnatural portal. Silver filigree dances along it’s curves and junctures, sparkling in the light. Down that hall, there is a final door, carved from pearlescent stone, which his hands reach towards and push open without thought.

He steps into a soft grey room, the walls hung with flowing silver drapery, the same frosted windows cresting to the highest peak of the room, tapered to a point.

“Lucien,” a commanding, though strangely gentle voice reaches him from the far corner. “Lucien, my son, come here.”

Molly walks forward. She is like a star shining through a grey twilight, her skin a bluish grey, her eyes impossibly bright aquamarine gems, pure white hair like liquid light flowing down her back and over her shoulders, dress made of a fine, drifting fabric, held in place by white leather and pearl scaled pauldrons. The three horns on her headdress curve back gracefully, draped with ice-like dewdrip gems.  About her throat rests a smooth grey stone, carved with the image of the beacon, hanging on a myriad of fine, silver chains.

The Bright Queen.

“You look so well, Lucien.”

“Thank you, Mother.”

Molly, in this state, cannot blanche, but he imagines that he would if he could.

“How go the preparations?”

“Well, Mother. I will be ready for the ceremony.”

Her hand slips beneath his chin, fingers barely brushing, but it is enough that Molly looks up.

“You are special, My Lucien. You will bring peace, someday, a peace for which I have long dared not hope.”

_ I’m not, I’m not!  _ Says Molly’s brain, but his lips form other words.

“Hope now, Mother, for the time will be soon.”

The hand on his chin drifts to his chest, presses over the eye, hiding it from view, Leylas Krynn’s warm hand is more unsettling than stabilizing, though Molly inadvertently eases into it anyways.

“Go, Lucien. Join the Prelate. I will be with you shortly.”

Molly bows his head low. “Yes, Mother.”

When he reaches the archway, beyond he can only see the impossible, all consuming light. No floor, no ceiling or walls…as he steps through, he glances back over his shoulder and watches as it is all eaten away, the light creeping over it in a protective layer, like a scab.

In the empty white, Molly’s feet make no sound. It is hard to even tell that he is moving.

When he stops, no longer able to tell where he began, where the archway was, where thee new chamber might be, Molly looks up and notices a pulsing glow, almost like whatever it is living, and Molly knows…Molly knows that this was a mistake.

It comes down towards him both rapidly and impossibly slow; Caleb’s magic must still be working, because Molly thinks for sure that by now, he’d have been able to startle himself awake. Instead the light drops before him and then, just like last time, presses into him, thought this time, it enters right through his chest, and the red eye there burns white hot as the light passes through it and disappears.

When the light snuffs out, resting warm inside him, the red eye is a faded silver, just like the one that it had painted on his forehead, save that here, a single red spot remains in the center. Molly waits for the heat to increase, waits to feel the molten core of It bursting forth from him, but all that there is, is a soft pulse, like a second heartbeat, pounding in his chest.

It is only then that he wakes to the cool blue morning, the room slatted with golden shafts of light from the promise of dawn, to Caleb’s arms around him, one hand limply resting over his chest. Gingerly, Molly pulls aside his shirt. The alterations from the dream remain and the new pulsing beat that syncopates with his heart remains.

No one has to know, Molly reassures himself. And then Caleb’s lips, rough and chapped, find the soft flesh of Molly’s neck and that limp hand flexes, pads of fingers pressing with delightful pressure into his skin, leaving instantly fading pressure marks in their wake.

“Mm. Goodmorning, Mister Mollymauk. How was your sleep?”

Molly affixes a smile to his face as he rolls, the loose collar of his shirt just falling over the eye mark on his chest. The pure blue of Caleb’s eyes flashes aquamarine for a split second and Molly pushes forward the last half inch, pressing their lips together in a chaste morning kiss. “Wonderfully, Caleb. Thank you.”

No one has to know.


End file.
